Tonya Today

The Last of the 2011 Books

2012-01-26T16:04:00.002-07:00

Hello out there,

The last book I finished reading in 2011 was Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. I really liked it. It's history, but told in an entertaining way, rather than being really dry and academic.

and I listened to audio books:
Heart of Darkness
Player Piano
Robopocolypse

I am not the hugest fan of audio books, but they did entertain me while doing stuff around the house, like cleaning, decorating for Christmas, and painting the basement. I guess my current preferences are:
1. Read a paper book
2. Read an e-book
3. Listen to an audio book

Anyway, in 2011 I read/listened to 58 books (not including kids' books). I think 2012 could have a bigger number since Violet is older and more able to entertain herself. On the other hand, I won't be lying around feeding her all day, so I'll miss out on that reading time. And on the other-other hand, in 2011 I read a lot of short novels that didn't need any thought, so those go quickly, and this year I might read more *literature* which really asks for some consideration and thought, and therefore more time. So I guess I'll just see how it goes.

So far this year, we've finished our work on the basement by tearing out an old, weirdly tall bar and painting two rooms. Jason put up a wall to make a storage room, and we had carpet installed. Now we have another play area for Violet, where toys can be strewn around without us feeling like our living room is a mess. She loves it down there and points and grunts and squeals to be taken downstairs to play. She has a toy kitchen with pans and fake food, and a shopping cart, and various other toys to play with.

The other room is the home gym area, and someday my office may move down there, too, if we need our third bedroom upstairs.

I still need to make and hang curtains and move the furniture around several times to get it right, but it's really nice to have that project so close to finished.

The next thing I'm working on is sorting through all my stuff to find things to donate. Last year I felt like I needed to accumulate things and settle in with the baby, with everything we might need. Now I feel like I am bogged down by too much stuff and need to lighten up. I'll let you know how many boxes I end up filling with donations. It might take all year, but I'd love to go through the whole house with the goal of de-cluttering.

It's almost 2012

2011-12-26T12:03:00.003-07:00

I'd better list the rest of the books I've read this year.

46: 11/22/63 by Stephen King is a winner. In it, a teacher travels back in time to try to stop JFK's assassination. There is adventure, references to the novel IT, a love story, and of course the wonderful thing we all dream of: getting to have a do-over for certain moments in our lives. King mentions in the afterword that his son advised him to change the ending, and it is perfect. I wish his son would go back and fix the endings of a few other books.

47: Half Empty by David Rakoff is a series of essays based around the topic of pessimism. They are funny, self-deprecating, and a little sad. Rakoff is a good writer, but I still prefer David Sedaris.

48: The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was okay. It's heavily inspired by Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, but intended for an older audience. I thought it had too many pop culture references, making it dated. To me, stories that are like fairy tales should be more timeless. Also, the pace of the book was imperfect. Too much time was spent on boring parts and then when the next adventure began, it was too much of a contrast. The excitement didn't build properly.
Here's a great line from it: "There was an ongoing competition, hotly contested, as to who could make the single most boring observation."
Even though I didn't fall in love with it, I liked it enough to read the sequel:

49: The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Again, I thought the pacing was off, but some parts were pretty fun. I will probably read the third book, if I notice when it comes out.

50: The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley. This is a historical fiction/romance novel, so it's outside of my usual fare. I did really enjoy reading it. The setting alternates between modern times and 1708, both in Scotland. I loved the historical details and also the description of a small town in present day Scotland. The protagonist writes a novel, using her ancestor's name for one of the characters, but her dreams seem to be tapping into ancestral memory, and with those hints, she finds more information about her own family history.

51: Didn't I Feed You Yesterday? by Laura Bennett. This is a book of funny essays about parenting, written by the red-haired, sophisticated contestant from "Project Runway." She has six kids and a career, a kind of loosey-goosey attitude toward parenting, and a sense of humor about life. It's a very light, meaningless read.

52: Made from Scratch by Jenna Woginrich. Meh. I like reading books about people who give up the city life and start making everything from scratch in the woods. This one just didn't do it for me. I think was too teach-y and I prefer to just read the author's story, rather than get instructions on how to follow suit.

53: Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon. Non-fiction by a nutrition professor who looked at all the weight studies and determined that being fat is not the cause of health problems. The most famously cited studies linking fat to disease have been discredited. She also states that the way our bodies work, it can be impossible to lose fat once you've gained it. So, her point is that we shouldn't feel badly about our weight. Just eat nutritious foods in reasonable amounts, exercise for health, and maybe for some of us, the excess fat will go away because of our improved lifestyle. She recognizes that it is very difficult to ignore societal pressures to be thin, and the bombardment of food advertising, and the pressure in social situations to eat a lot of junk with everyone else, and gives suggestions for dealing with those issues.

54: Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham. I'm sure I will re-read this one for years to come. Cunningham suggests plant pairings to discourage pests, keep the soil healthy, and help each other grow. She recommends mixing flowers in among your crops, and vice versa. I will probably skim through this in a couple months when I start daydreaming about my garden again. For now, I'm content to think about other projects -- I didn't even put the garden to bed this year. I am still saving kitchen scraps to throw out there as soil amendments. I hope to get a compost box this spring (usually they are on sale for Earth Day so I will look for one then).

I am in the middle of a short old cozy novel called And Dangerous to Know, Cleopatra, a Life, and No Ordinary Time (about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt during WWII). I'll try to finish all of those before the year ends, but I won't be surprised if I run out of time.

I'm thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2012, and I have a few ideas.

1. Get rid of excess stuff, especially clothes that I don't wear anymore
2. Finish our basement. We're working on this now and maybe I'll put up some progress pictures.
3. Finish a bunch of sewing projects
4. Start blogging again regularly and really decide on a topic to focus on
5. Write a whole novel, instead of just starting one

Those are subject to change, but that list is a start.

11-11-11

2011-11-13T14:51:00.002-07:00

So I had this big idea about starting some life-improving changes on November 11, 2011. That date is thought to be really powerful, so I hoped that it would be an extra help in starting some better habits. I want to be a little more organized, especially with meal planning for myself and for Violet. I also want to be more focused and productive. I AM working on some goals, but I didn't do very well at them on 11-11-11 (or the couple days since). I will keep trying to improve and by the end of the year, maybe I'll be perfect.

One thing I'd like to do again is blog more regularly. I also want to write a novel. And I want to finish the Blog Novel that I started. It's hard to write with a baby in my life, but it was hard to write before she existed, too. I'll keep at it and someday I will finish writing a whole novel.

In the meantime, I'm still reading. Here are some more books I've read this year:

39 & 40. Kate Carlisle's The Lies That Bind and Murder Under Cover. These are cozy mysteries about a bookbinder. No complaints, easy reads, entertaining, and kind of silly.

41, 42 & 43. Kate Collins's Mum's the Word, Slay it with Flowers, and Dearly Depotted. Cozy mysteries about a law school-dropout who now owns a flower shop. There are 10 or 12 of these and I'll likely read them all. Fun, easy reads with some humor.

44. Julie Kenner's Demon Ex Machina. Cozy plus demons. Are demons cozy? A soccer mom is also a demon slayer. Lots of bad jokes, but still pretty fun. I could not stand to read more than one at a time due to the author's overuse of the same phrases AND use of the first person. But, this series is fun.

45. People with Dirty Hands by Robin Chotzinoff. I have read these essays about passionate gardeners several times and plan to re-read it in the future. I really like Chotzinoff's style. She talks to rose rustlers (people who take cuttings from wild roses or other people's roses), chili growers, ladybug hunters, urban gardeners, tomato-obsessives, and more. She makes people seem interesting even if they aren't.

More later -- hopefully soon as I intend to make blogging a habit again by the end of the year.

August Post

2011-08-21T17:15:00.002-06:00

Wow, it's been a long time. I have a bunch of books to report.

30, 31, 32, 33. Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear
An Incomplete Revenge: Maisie heads to the countryside to catch an arsonist and meet some Gypsies.
Among the Mad: Maisie tries to find a would-be mass murderer who she suspects has been institutionalized.
The Mapping of Love and Death: Maisie traces an old war-time romance (and tries to face letting go of her own).
A Lesson in Secrets: Maisie works with Scotland Yard.

These are all really good books. I don't think I was at all disappointed in any of them. The whole series is definitely worth reading!

34. Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Special Agent Pendergast is back, and so are his ward, Constance, and his teenaged Kansas assistant, Corrie. He works on unraveling the mystery of his wife's death. It's just as fun and exciting as usual for this series.

35. The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. A city girl falls in love with a farmer and moves to the country. Pretty good. I liked Kimball's voice. I also like the idea that she and her partner had: grow everything that their customers need. Not just zucchini and onions, but meat, dairy, eggs, syrup, grains, flours, beans, herbs, and fruits. Pretty amazing idea. I like to daydream about being a farmer, though I know that I do not want to HAVE to work that hard every day. I like to work hard on my garden and then sometimes say to hell with it and let the weeds grow while I take a break. I guess that's what keeps it fun for me -- it's optional.

36. Still Life with Chickens by Catherine Goldhammer. In this memoir, a woman gets divorced and has to move with her daughter. Illogically, she buys baby chickens just when they're having open houses to sell their old house and looking for a new place to live. But the chickens are a great distraction and bring the mother and daughter together. I liked this one, too.

37. The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. In this memoir, Alexander tells us about creating an enormous, ridiculous garden in his yard. It's so fun. He and his wife waste so much time, effort, money, and water, and have such a wonderful, disappointing, frustrating, infuriating time of it. And he learns lots of lessons. And he adds up the cost of his garden one year and does the math to see how much he spent per tomato. You already know the answer from the title, and it would be scary to do the math in most people's gardens. I liked this one, also.

But gardens aren't really about saving money, right? They're about having a project and doing some sort of tangible work with a delicious reward. And having everything ruined by hail or bugs or disease, and keeping a certain perspective on life -- great for Buddhists to remember to let go and stop trying to grasp on to anything. Nothing is permanent.

38. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.
Wow, this one has a really cool premise and you should definitely check it out from the library. Riggs collected a bunch of cool old photos and wrote a young adult novel around them. COOL! And the plot is that there are kids with special powers who live together in a house in Wales -- or is it just a story that the narrator's grandpa told him? Was grandpa a liar, or was he psychologically damaged in the war?

It's pretty dang good for the first half and then it's only okay. But it's worth at least flipping through at a store or library and seeing the pictures and imagining what story YOU could write with those photos. I just read something that said that we find our novel when we read someone else's and it's disappointing. We start thinking about how we could have done it right. I think this one is inspiring tons of would-be novelists right now.

___

My 8-month old CRAWLER! is crying so I have to go. Today she stood up all by herself for a few seconds, not holding on to anything! She might be walking before too long.

May Post

2011-05-19T13:58:00.004-06:00

Here's the list of recent reads:

23: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. It's about Sookie Stackhouse, who can read people's minds, but not those of vampires or werewolves or fairies or other supernatural creatures. The main thing I noticed while reading this one is that Harris's protagonists are always cleaning their houses (or other people's, in the case of the one who owns a cleaning business). And it makes me want to clean more often. They just vacuum real quick while waiting for someone to try to kill them, or work on cleaning the attic until someone else turns up dead. It's weirdly inspiring to me, reminding me that I could clean for a few minutes here and there while the baby is sleeping or playing. It doesn't have to be a huge, whole-house cleaning. Just a touch-up.

It's so weird to think of how busy I was during college! I worked full time, took at least 5 classes a semester, had friends, and had hobbies! If I had half an hour before I needed to get to work, I might run to the store. Now I feel like I need hours free to do anything. Part of it is that I live in the burbs and it takes half an hour to get to the store, but a lot of it is just a lazy mindset. Maybe I will be able to change that this year.

24: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. A really good novel that takes place in Eastern Europe, in modern times and during WWII. We follow a young woman doctor and also learn about her grandfather's youth. Definitely recommended.

25: The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing. This is a kind of alternate-reality novel in which something has happened that causes all production to stop, and government to lose control, and people to slowly ooze from the cities. An older woman, still living in the city, somehow becomes the guardian of a young teenage girl. The woman doesn't want to leave the city, but it's becoming more and more dangerous as the wild children who have been left behind take more and more control. It's creepy. Even creepier that she describes it as an autobiography!

26. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. After seeing the 7th movie, I needed to re-read this book since I couldn't remember it very well and I wanted to know what happens at the end. When it first came out, I read it really fast, like in a couple days (759 pages). When I speed-read, I don't seem to synthesize the content nearly as well. I like that Rowling "humanized" Dumbledore by giving him faults. And I still say Snape was a dick, no matter what side he was secretly working for.

27. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. This is the first in a series of novels about a 1930-ish lady detective in London. She is also a psychologist and has been trained in meditation, so her methods are a bit unorthodox. Mazie's past influences her behavior in regards to her clients, and it really adds a lot to the stories. When she was 13, her mother died and her father sent her to be a maid in a rich family's house. They discovered how intelligent she was and set about educating her. She studied with a psychologist/investigator/Secret Service Agent/Medical Examiner, then went to a posh college. She dropped out to become a nurse during WWI and ended up in France, right in the midst of horrible fighting. She was injured and went home to convalesce, finish school, and work with her mentor. Now she has her own business, a male assistant, and a couple of suitors.

In this first novel, she investigates a retreat intended as a safe haven for soldiers whose disfigurement made them uncomfortable in normal society. (Did you know they used to make tin masks and paint them to look skin-colored for those whose faces were badly damaged?)

28. Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear. In the second Maisie Dobbs novel, she searches for a runaway spinster heiress who has a habit of running off. Another good read.

29. Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear. In the third Maisie Dobbs novel, she searches for proof of death of a wartime pilot. She also helps her friend find information about her brother's death.

I used to be unable to stand to read about wars -- it really upset me. For some reason I am able to read these fictionalized accounts of war and post-war events with interest and without becoming overly saddened. I find it fascinating to read about this time period in between the World Wars and am really enjoying Maisie Dobbs as a character.

30. The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart. An alternate-reality short novel about a world in which the Gizmo has replaced books. Once people can just stream books for free, they quit buying them, and eventually all publishers stop publishing and writers stop writing. No one actually reads books anymore -- just tweets and blogs. A young married couple inherits one of the last remaining bookstores, but what they don't know is that it stays in business by selling marijuana. Funny and well-written. And I read it on my Gizmo -- I mean, my Kindle.

--

The days are just rushing past around here. Jason and I decided before Violet was born that we would take her picture every day for her first year, and we've kept up with it so far. It is really cool to see how much she's changed already! Today is day 161 with her in our lives, and it's been pretty great. She is so sweet and snuggly, and so impatient and demanding, and so curious and brave. She loves electronic devices, though we really want her to avoid our tv addiction. She is totally enamored with our cat, Francis. She can't wait until she is 6 months old and can try eating food. Her wavy hair has the biggest whorl in the back, and she almost always has an Alfalfa lock of hair sticking straight out. She blows spit bubbles and laughs and squeals in delight. Her nails are razor sharp. She is very strong and seems almost ready to stand up on her own, though we're still working on crawling.

In other news, we're planning on building a deck this summer (well, hiring people to build it for us). We're planning a garden again, and may plant this weekend. I'm glad we waited because yesterday was all tornado warnings and hail and rain, rain, rain. Last year I planted right after Mother's Day and the garden was destroyed by hail. I learned my lesson: wait another week or two!

We have planted berry bushes again (this year I've been watering regularly and I know that it just might take a while before any growth is visible). And we added some lilac bushes along the fence to block the neighbors' view into our yard. Some day the bushes will be taller than the fence :)

I want to plant tons of bulbs this fall so we have a beautiful spring next year. We may also plant some trees this year. I'd really like to have cherries and apples. We are kind of waiting to see what happens with the deck first, but the guy who's supposed to be drawing up the plans had to go to a funeral and now it's been like 3 weeks and we're still waiting. Doesn't he know the WHOLE YARD is waiting??

Anyway, it's fun to do more to our yard and see it start to look less like a rock quarry and more like a suburban yard. And in a few years, it will be a crazy yard, filled to the brim with flowers and fruits. And maybe a half pipe.

See you soon!

More books!

2011-04-12T19:37:00.002-06:00

19. Bossypants by Tina Fey. SOOO funny! If you like Tina Fey, you will like her book. If you like Liz Lemon (her character on 30 Rock), you will like this book. I kept laughing and Violet would look at me with a warning in her eye -- Are you done, lady? Because I'm serious. She does not like sudden noises or loud noises because she is a baby.

And the books read on Kindle (which need to be segregated because for me, reading on the Kindle is still a different experience from reading a real book. Yes, I think of paper books as REAL and electronic books as e-books, something else entirely):

And I'm sorry to say that I don't remember too many details about some of them because they were read when I had a newborn and my memory from that time is not good. But I'll tell you if I liked them or not, okay?

20. The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Potzsh. Liked it. You would, too. Historical mystery/thriller with murder and children and witchcraft and hangmen!

21. Impact by Douglas Preston. You'd like it if you like other books by Douglas Preston. Adventure, thriller, lots of characters, I bet. To be honest, I don't remember this one at all.
* Okay, I just refreshed my memory with the help of Amazon's description, and it IS a fun book. I like the main character in it, Wyman Ford, rogue ex-CIA agent. So I can recommend it if you like this genre.

22. Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer. I liked it but kind of in spite of thinking she is sort of annoying. It was interesting for me because she talks about raising her kids and feeling some pressure to use the Attachment Parenting style (co-sleeping, baby-wearing, etc...) and I'm thinking a lot about parenting styles. She also talks about living in Chautauqua for a year, which is in Boulder, Colorado, and I lived in Boulder for some years and believe Chautauqua to be the epicenter of hippiedom. So it was fun to get a glimpse into the weirdness there. Plus she talks about trying to force her way through yoga rather than relaxing, and I am Type-A in some aspects of my life. And I like yoga! If all that stuff is interesting to you, then I recommend the book, but if not, skip it.

Oh, and I liked reading about her weird childhood near Seattle. Her parents separated when she was little but never got divorced and tried to pretend like that was normal and better than divorcing. But it was just weird for the author and her brother.

--

And now I'm caught up again.

The baby's asleep in the evening! What should I do? What should I do? There are 47 things I'd like to do, but I get a type of paralysis now when I actually have free time! I better get going or I'll waste it.

Hello, Strangers!

2011-04-07T12:00:00.004-06:00

Oh, that's right. I'm the stranger. You know what? It's difficult to blog when you have a baby to take care of. When she's sleeping or playing by herself, I usually use that time to get up and move around rather than sit at the computer.

Here's what I do while holding her:
*Read
*Watch TV
*Watch movies
*Look at the internet on a laptop, but rarely type anything because I'm holding the baby
*Look at the internet on my smartphone
*Eat things that don't require silverware
*Try to cut her magically fast-growing fingernails (luckily I haven't had to cut her toenails yet since she somehow files them down by rubbing her feet inside her socks)

Here's what I do when she lets me put her down:
*Exercise -- how I miss the days when I could do as much as I wanted! Right now I would love to spend about two hours a day, including weights or cardio + yoga + a walk. Some days I only get 10 minutes and on a few rare days I've actually managed the above-mentioned 2 hours!
*Prepare food, eat, and wash dishes
*Take a shower or bath (I'm lucky if this happens every other day, and I really prefer to shower EVERY day)
*Spot-clean the house. One day I clean a bathroom and the next maybe I finally put away laundry (I am able to wash, dry, and fold clothes almost daily but putting them away is another story)

Violet's now 4 months old and she has discovered the joy of playing with toys, which is awesome! I used to be her only toy but now she can be awake and happy without me holding her. Don't get me wrong, I love to hold her and still do it for hours every day (especially in the evenings, when she simply MUST be held by her mama). I know some day she will be horrified at the thought of spending time with me and I am enjoying it while it lasts! But I do enjoy having a couple of hours each day when I can do something else.

Now, on to the book list. Here are the books I've been reading:
(and sorry if I don't have time to add links. I know that sucks, but I'm afraid I might have to half-ass it or not do it a-tall.)

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. A really nice-sized little book about decluttering. I like it. I'll keep it and re-read parts of it later, when I have more time to sort things. I would really like to do another sweep of all my stuff (I did one about a year ago and got rid of a lot of stuff and it felt great. Once I lose some more pregnancy weight I want to try on all my clothes and get rid of stuff that's too small or that I don't like or that I think I'll never wear. I've got 13 pounds to go!)

2. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett. This was recommended (and given to me) by my friends Joe and Emily and it is a great, funny novel about the end of the world. A demon and an angel who are both stationed on earth and who have become friends over many, many years are the main protagonists. I must point out that it is BRITISH humor, so if you don't like that, do not read this book.

3-7. The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins. Shit, these are good books. They're for teens or tweens or 11-year-olds and are about a seemingly normal kid who gets sucked into an underground land where he is thought to be The Warrior of their prophecies. He's brave and kind and good. Don't we love epic quests with pure-hearted heros? If you do, read this series. The individual titles are: Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of the Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, Gregor and the Code of Claw. WARNING: if you start reading the first one, you probably will not stop reading until you've completed all five.

8 & 9. If Books Could Kill and Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle. These are cozies (light mysteries) with a heroine who is a bookbinder. They're fun, light reads but I won't insist that you read them.

10. If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler. I love Anne Tyler and her quirky, thoughtful characters. Sometimes there's just no point to the story, and it's more of a character study, and I think this is one of those. Here are some things that I liked:
"A tune began in his head, hummed nonchalantly by that sexless, anonymous voice that lived inside him and always spoke words as he read them and thoughts as he thought them."
and
"He never could have the feeling that the whole family was under one roof and taken care of; one always had to be out wandering around somewhere beyond his jurisdiction." What a great use of that word!

11. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron. This is a collection of essays about this and that and aging. I'm 34 and found it very funny and relevant. You don't have to be Nora's age to enjoy it. Here are a couple things I particularly liked:
She's at a movie theater and the movie isn't properly centered on the screen. She's the only one who will go and complain about it. "By the time I got back to my seat, the image on-screen had been reframed, although not perfectly, but by then I was too exhausted by my heroism to complain further."
and
She finds an online game called Scrabble Blitz and says, "I began playing it without a clue that within one day -- I am not exaggerating -- it would fry my brain."

12. The Great Fitness Experiment by Charlotte Hilton Andersen. Well, I wouldn't call it "great" but it was kind of fun. Each month for a year, she and some friends tried a new style of working out and/or a new eating style to see what results they'd get. That's fun for someone like me, because I like to work out and I like trying new stuff. BUT, it would have been more useful if she had done the programs for more like 2 months, since 1 month is too short to really know if it's going to work. AND sometimes she didn't really do the program. Like, she'd read about it but instead of buying the DVD or the program, she'd just make up something that she thought was close enough. Um, if you're writing a book, try to get the publisher to pay for the DVDs you need to write the book! So, kind of fun but not quite good enough.

13. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. This is subtitled, "A Journal of My Son's First Year." This woman raised her son as a single mother and it sounds like hell. I can't imagine being alone with a newborn ALL THE TIME. Her entries are funny and sad and I read it while Violet was a newborn and was so grateful to have my husband! She had a bunch of great friends who helped her and I guess that's what you have to do if you are a single mom -- let people help you or hire people to help you. Anyway, I recommend this book if you think it sounds at all appealing, or if you are about to be a parent so you will be able to think, "man, this is really hard but at least I'm not a single mom." or "fuck, it's really hard being a single mom, but if that crazy Anne Lamott with her author photo of herself with white-lady dreads can do it, so can I!" (Plus I just Googled her and she wears those crazy white-lady dreads still, apparently. That must be her thing.)

14. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell. A good Swedish detective novel. There is a whole series starring police inspector Kurt Wallander, who is separated from his wife and semi-estranged from his father and daughter and keeps getting a little fatter and less together. He's likable and you root for him to get his shit together. I like the writing and the glimpse into Swedish life.

15. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Why did I decide to read this? I don't know. Partly because Raj read it on "Big Bang Theory." Partly because sometimes I just need a little life-affirming influence in my life and I don't live in Boulder anymore so I can't get it from hippies. It's what you would expect: uplifting and funny and also sad. But it also has cussing! And it was fun to read about Italy, and an ashram in India, and what it's like in Indonesia. I have to admit that I really enjoyed it and maybe I don't care if you think I'm a dork.

16. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. I really liked this one! It covers three different time periods and sets of characters. Nell was a lost little girl who showed up alone on a ship in Australia. Her granddaughter tries to find out how that happened after Nell has died. The granddaughter uncovers the story of Nell's parents and her very early childhood. It's really good. I did feel a tiny bit befuddled sometimes with the switching back and forth between times, but I really believe that was because I was so sleep-deprived and distracted. I think you'll keep up just fine and really like it.

17. Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Well, I love these guys for their Pendergast novels, and this is a new series with a new character: Gideon Crew. I don't like him as much as Pendergast, but he might grow on me in future adventures. He's smart and handy and has good reasons to be a loose cannon. Overall, not as much of a page-turner for me as some of their other novels, but appealing enough that I will check out the next one in the series.

18. Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan. This mystery felt like something new. It wasn't a comforting novel following the usual pattern, and I felt like I could not predict what was going to happen. It's smart, well-written, with interesting and mysterious characters (is the main guy good or bad? do we like him? can we readers trust him?) and a strong plot. I definitely recommend it.

I read some more on my kindle, but I'll report on those next time.

See you soon, hopefully!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011-01-01T19:37:00.005-07:00

Wow, 2010 was awesome! I got a house, a husband, a garden, a new car, and a daughter. I am incredibly lucky!

I finished some more books:

#47, 48, 49: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. This series is written for young adults. It's set in North America in a post-war future in which democracy and freedom no longer exist. In order to intimidate the masses, the government holds an annual lottery to choose children or teens from each district to compete in deadly games. To win, the child or teen will almost certainly have to murder his or her opponents.

These are hard to put down, keep-you-reading-all-night books. There's lots of violence and death, but no sex, even with a teenage love triangle as a major plot line. Strange.

#50: The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. I read a lot of this one in the hospital, waiting until it was time to push! It's a good, modern gothic tale. A woman returns as a teacher to her own boarding school and is haunted by an unfinished curse from her time there. There are secrets, adoptions, incest, and plenty of teenage girl drama!

#51: True Grit by Charles Portis. The Coen brothers' movie is out now, so you probably know the plot: 14-year old girl hires a ruthless one-eyed Marshall to help her hunt down and kill the coward who murdered her father. She is the narrator of the novel and is damned funny. You'll like it.

#52: The Liars' Club by Mary Karr. A memior of growing up in Texas with alcoholic parents. Pretty good. It's the type of memior in which the rememberer doesn't feel sorry for herself about her difficult life. She's able to see humor in lots of tough situations, so it's enjoyable, not painful to read.

#53: Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle. A cozy mystery starring a pretty bookbinder who was raised on a commune. Quick, entertaining, and non-taxing, like a cozy should be.

So I finished about half as many books as last year. That makes sense, since I did so much work on our house and garden. Plus when I had morning sickness (first AND third trimester) I tended to watch tv or waste time online instead of reading books. I also read parts of lots of books about pregnancy and babies. I wonder how many I can read in 2011 with a baby in my arms?

More Complaining!

2010-11-27T18:39:00.004-07:00

I forgot to complain about two pregnancy symptoms yesterday.

1. My teeth hurt! I feel like I can't even thoroughly chew my food because they hurt. I can't wait to go to the dentist and get them cleaned after the baby gets here. It's recommended that you go during pregnancy, but I am so nauseated, I'm not letting anyone put their hands in my mouth. I'm just brushing and flossing a lot while I wait.

2. My wrists and elbows hurt! Pregnancy often makes carpal tunnel syndrome a lot worse, and mine is bad enough to begin with. For an example of how bad it is now, Jason got himself a new rifle on Black Friday and I was holding it, looking at the cool sight on it, and my elbow wore out after about 30 seconds. I just couldn't hold up the gun any longer. Youch!

I finished a book today:
#47: Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris. This is Harper Connelly mystery, and as usual, Harper "listens" to a dead person's bones and discovers the cause of death and then gets into trouble because of it. BUT in this episode, this stranger's death relates back to Harper's own family secrets. Entertaining as usual, and I didn't even notice any glaring problems with the writing or technical elements of the story. Good job, Charlaine! (FYI, I say that name in the most horrible southern accent!)

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet? I put ours up last weekend. I even have most of my presents wrapped. I always like to decorate, shop, and wrap early. I love Christmas. I hate shopping in crowds. I think it's so fun to have gifts under the tree. And this year in particular, I know I won't be able to concentrate much on people other than my new baby and my own little family. So I had to get it done early, or maybe not do it at all.

I still have a couple strands of lights to put up when I have the energy. I have about 100 things I'd like to do right now, but I don't have it in me. They will just have to wait!

Still Pregnant! Plus some books

2010-11-26T17:28:00.003-07:00

Well, y'all, I'm 38 weeks along now and my little girl can't come soon enough! Oh, we're crowded! My poor leg is so pained from muscles and ligaments loosening up and moving into the wrong places and putting weird pressure on something where my inner thigh muscle and hamstring meet my groin. Sometimes it makes me cry to walk around the house. Sometimes my leg won't respond when I try to make it walk around. Sometimes it just hurts but still works. I can't wait for that to stop! It should stop pretty quickly after the baby is born and my body stops flooding itself with Relastin, the hormone that makes your muscles relax.

I'm also THRILLED at the thought of heartburn going away!! And the thought of sleeping as long as the baby will let me without waking up choking on vomit!! I think that problem might be known as GERD.

Jason's excited for me to stop snoring so much and so loudly. I also drool in my sleep. The insides of your nose swell up and then sometimes you have to breathe through your mouth, and you have to sleep on your side when you're pregnant, and you make extra saliva, but I don't remember why, and add it up together and it means lots of drool.

I can't wait to meet this girl! Who is she? What's she going to be like? What's she going to like? What will she look like? What will her voice sound like? We'll find out pretty soon.

Okay, some more books that I've read this year:

#38: Find Me, a mystery by Carol O'Connell. I like the protagonist, Kathy Mallory. She's pretty much a sociopathic cop and badass. In this one, we learn about how she was orphaned and why she has been calling hundreds of phone numbers and freaking out the women who answer by saying, "It's Kathy. I'm lost." She also tracks a serial killer who finds victims along Route 66.

#39: The Man Who Cast Two Shadows by Carol O'Connell. Another Mallory novel. Pretty fun.

#40: World Without End by Ken Follet. This is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. Each book is over 1,000 pages long, so I recommend getting them on your Kindle if you have one. If you are pregnant, it is surprisingly difficult to read giant books because it's not comfortable to prop them up on your stomach. This one takes place in the same locations as Pillars, but it's 200 years later. Some of the characters are descendants of those in Pillars. I think this one is just as good. It's a little different in that it doesn't immediately establish the good vs. evil dichotomy. There are people we don't like, but I didn't hate anyone right off the bat like in Pillars. It's an engaging, satisfying read.

I've read the following books on my Kindle, which Jason got me for my birthday this year. I really like it, but I know I will continue to read paper books, too. Huge books would be nicer on the Kindle. Books with pictures are better on paper. Books that you want to flip back and forth through are better on paper. And sometimes price will be the deciding factor. Most books are $9.99 on Kindle, but sometimes you find paper books much cheaper than that. Anyway, here's what I read:

#41: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. The old fashioned language in this one made me slow down and enjoy it more. It was fun, and pretty exciting.

#42: Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. This was a cute, fun little mystery. Written in 1967, it has some funny stereotypes about the difference in attitude between Americans and British. Also funny: the American's idioms and catch phrases.

#43: Room by Emma Donoghue. In this novel, a young woman was kidnapped at age 19 and held by a wacko, locked in a room for 7 years. She bore his child, Jack, who tells us this story at age 5. It's really interesting -- she tried to make it seem like life was okay there, and that is was normal for them to be locked in the room. How else could she raise her son? But when he turns 5, she decides it might be time to try to get out. He doesn't even know that Outside is real, so it's quite a big upset in his life. If you can stand to read a whole novel in child-speak, it's definitely worth checking out.

#44: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. This novel takes place in the early 1900s in Wisconsin. A country businessman advertises for a new wife, and a woman comes to him, but it's not who he expected. There are a few twists and turns and a surprising amount of sex. It was okay.

#45: Little Bee by Chris Cleave. I don't want to share too much plot, but there is a teenage Nigerian girl and a middle-aged British woman. They meet once in Nigeria and then again in London a couple years later. I will tell you that something horrible happens, but the victim does not feel sorry for herself. She says something like, "celebrate my scars because it means I'm alive and I healed." It's good.

#46: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. This one's pretty fun. He goes room by room in an old British house, telling us all sorts of facts about architecture, vermin, industrialization, fashion, surgery, landscaping, and sewage, among other things.

Okay, I'm all caught up on finished books. I'm still in the middle of lots of other books, including several about babies. I may only finish 52 this year, or one per week. It's quite a difference from last year.

Books #32 - 37

2010-11-05T15:22:00.004-06:00

Hello, friends!

I've been doing some reading since I last posted, though nowhere near as much as last year. I got a Kindle for my birthday, which I really like. It's nice to have multiple books in one little contraption. I still love paper books, with their pages and the smell of paper and the cover art and the ability to mark a page and turn back to look at it easily (you can bookmark with the Kindle, but I don't know how yet). Anyway, here are some books I've read recently:

#32: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. A couple push their luck by having a fifth baby when they already had a perfect family. And there's something different about him -- like he might be a throwback to one of our pre-Homo Sapiens ancestors! When I started feeling our baby kick, and seeing my stomach bulge and ripple, I couldn't help but think of this book, in which the little monster tortures his mom in utero. Since reading this, I saw an episode of the show "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" in which a woman's first baby had broken 3 of her ribs while kicking inside her body! The second, surprise baby barely moved at all. No wonder she didn't realize it was in there!

#33: Ben, In the World by Dorris Lessing. This is the sequel to The Fifth Child, in which the little monster heads out on a search for more of his own kind. Poor Ben. He's a little late.

#34: What Makes You Not A Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse. I like reading about buddhism because it makes me feel calm and less enchanted by consumerism. But this is my least favorite buddhism book so far. It took me forever to read. I think the others I've read had some fun and humor in them, and this one had none.

#35: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris. I love David Sedaris and his sister, Amy. This is a book of very short stories which star animals. It's illustrated by Ian Falconer. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoy David's stories about his own life, but it's okay. I guess I was expecting the same level of hilarity, but I did not find it here.

#36: The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn. This is a winner! A local newscaster investigates the death of his friend and colleague. But the important thing is that the writing is fantastic. Try this:

"Frank didn't expect much from food, but he thought it shouldn't injure you."

and:

"Sometimes he imagined that he was the last person living after the bomb had dropped, and such thoughts inevitably failed to lift his mood."

#37: The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. As long as I can avoid seeing the author's photo (the hair -- oh man, the hair!), I really enjoy these mystery-thrillers starring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. In this one, someone is going to elaborate lengths to frame men for rapes and murders. There is physical evidence planted in their homes -- but how does anyone know what kind of beer, condoms, and shoes they recently bought? It's a pretty decent story about the evil potential of information-gathering companies.

I have a few more to report, and I'll be back soon to do so. Hey, there are lots of ways to define "soon."

Book #31

2010-10-01T13:11:00.004-06:00

Martha Sandwieiss's Passing Strange sounds SO good! It is the true story of a white man living in New York in the late 1800s, going to hoity-toity clubs and fraternizing with movers and shakers. He's a well known and well respected geologist and writer. And he's got Jungle Fever. In his geologically oriented travels around the world, Clarence King decides that dark-skinned women are more natural and real, and they're the only ones who really attract him. But in Manhattan in those days, racial intermingling simply was not done.

So he starts sneaking out at night, frequenting black clubs and listening to black music. Did you know that many white men did so at that time, in the U.S. and in Europe? They'd leave all their identification at home in case they "got caught" and prowl around black neighborhoods, seeing what was going on in what they thought of as a more "real" world -- one with less artifice.

But that's not enough. Clarence King met Ada Copeland, a black former slave, and he gave her a fake name and identity: James Todd, black Pullman porter. And he married her and they had a bunch of kids! And he pretended for 13 years to be black! And he never told his friends (and certainly not his mother) that he was married! He lived a double life right in the same city.

Now, you can get most of that information off the book cover, so don't think I ruined it for you.

What a great story! Unfortunately, neither Ada nor Clarence/James left any diaries, letters, or other evidence about their thoughts or feelings toward each other. The story must therefore be told with a lot of, "we must suppose that..." and "it can be assumed that..." which is damn boring. Sandweiss also using an academic voice throughout, which reinforces the boredom. I think I would have rather read a fictionalized version of the story.

Here's a great line from one of King's letters to his friend, "You have always thought my alleged savagery of soul a mere attitudinizing but you were wrong." Try to use that somehow in your own life!

I Can Still See My Feet

2010-09-22T14:13:00.001-06:00

Ikea Haul!

2010-08-25T12:06:00.001-06:00

Here's the pile of stuff we brought home from Ikea (not including the furniture). It is so fun to look around that store. Next year we will have our own store, only four years after it was originally promised. If everything goes as planned. And our whole house can become organized with cute, well-though-out design.

So, at 24 weeks into this, I am surprised at how compromised my movement is already.

I'm already having trouble getting up from the couch without using my arms to push me up. I didn't think that would happen until the very end, but my abs really can't work like they used to.

I also have trouble rolling over from one side to the other in bed. I used to be able to do that in my sleep (HA!).

I can't jump nearly as much, which is seriously slowing down my workouts. If I can't do tough workouts, I have to eat less, and I don't like that.

I can't lie on my stomach, which isn't a big deal, but I'll probably really like it when I can do it again.

AND, if it's past noon, I can't bend over without getting painful heartburn. So that includes picking up things off the floor, putting on my shoes, using the dishwasher, etc... And the heartburn doesn't just hurt; it makes me feel like throwing up. No fun!

But it's totally worth it and I can't wait for December!

A Song That Makes Me Laugh Out Loud

2010-08-21T23:41:00.001-06:00

We've heard this song a few times on satellite radio, and it is just so silly! It's South African hip hop.

Yo, I'm a NINJA!

Hot shorts

2010-08-20T05:35:00.003-06:00

When Jason and I were in Vegas for our honeymoon, we saw these shorts for sale at H&M:

Elastic-waist, acid-washed short-shorts! They were only $5, but still! Someone should probably be ashamed.

Baby's Room!

2010-08-18T18:33:00.002-06:00

I'm done painting the baby's room now, and today I put together her furniture. She has a crib and a dresser (which we will use as the changing table, too).

I draped one of her curtains over the crib so you can see the design and the colors with the wall color. The wall color is called Sanibal Grey, but to me it looks like light blue with a hint of grey and a hint of green. In person, it looks like a lighter version of the blue stripes in the curtains.

See that ric-rac? Well, those curtains are a little bit country. And I really didn't want country-style furniture in our house, so we had to go to Ikea in Dallas to buy our furniture and then drive it all the way home. And THEN I picked out country-tinged textiles! Still, I love her plain furniture (which was reasonably priced and did not take very long for me to put together by myself). And I love her curtains and bedding.

And I desperately hope someone buys her this as a present:

http://www.target.com/dp/B001SI416M/ref=sc_qi_img_viewdetails?ie=UTF8&title=view%20full%20details

It's a sleep sack with a cowboy theme! It doesn't get much country-er than that.

Stuff and then More Books! # 23 -

2010-08-18T11:38:00.002-06:00

Jeez, has it been long enough since I posted? All is well with the baby and everything else.

I went to the in-laws reunion and the horrid email writer was there, but he just pretended that nothing had happened and I just avoided him as much as possible. Since there were about 30 adults and 20 kids, it was easy to do without people wondering why I was snubbing him. I learned from another relative that he often writes really horrible, inappropriate emails. Somehow that made me feel better, even as it reveals him as an even bigger asshole.

My garden is giving up all kinds of good stuff now: basil, cilantro, dill, watermelons, corn, peas, tomatoes (finally!), hot peppers, bell peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, and spinach. And gourds. I am still waiting on potatoes and muskmelons and also for that glorious day when I can eat tomatoes until I'm sick of them. [Yeah, I think either tomato or potato doesn't have an "e" when pluralized, but I don't know which one. Just like G.W., I know.]. I have only been getting a few teeny tomatoes each day, which just whets the appetite without sating it.

I'm working on the baby's room and will share some photos later or tomorrow or sometime. It's so fun to imagine having a little girl living in that room! What's she going to be like? What will she look like? What will she like? Will she have one of those super-high-pitched little girl voices?? Oh man, I used to babysit a little girl whose voice was unbelievably high! It made me laugh every time she talked.

Okay, some books I've been reading:

#23: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson. The third in the trilogy. Tight writing, good plot development, very satisfying. I really want to talk about a problem I had with it, but it would spoil the book for you, and I'd rather you read it.

#24: Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman. A Baltimore-based mystery novel with a female P.I. as the star. It was okay. I have enjoyed other Lippman books much more. I think What the Dead Know was excellent. This was just okay.

#25: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore. A short novel about two young women. Pretty good. I loved her short story collection, Birds of America, more, but this is pretty good. Here are a couple great excerpts:

"I sang 'Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?' in a solo, in front of everyone, at Sunday service. At the end no one clapped, but you didn't at a church service. That was one of the things that was too bad about church."

and

"At vespers I actually prayed hard to God and on several occasions believed I felt the Holy Spirit enter me then silently cry out and flee."

#26: Faithful Place by Tana French. Another Ireland-based mystery novel from French. I really like her style. It's another story about a flawed detective who is drawn back to his home town to face up to events from earlier in his life. I'm not tired of that yet. There's a lot of the literary in her mysteries, so they're not just genre novels. Really good writing.

#27: The Burning Wire by Jeffrey Deaver. Another one starring Lincoln Rhyme, the paralyzed ex-crime scene detective, and his girlfriend/protege, Amelia Sachs. In this one, a killer with an expert knowledge of how to use and abuse electricity uses it to terrorize New York City. It might make you afraid of the outlets in your own house, if you're easily spooked. As usual, a good read.

#28: Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris. Another Sookie Stackhouse novel. These are total fluff, so don't expect too much. Fun to read, but I've already forgotten most of what happened.

#29: Terminal Freeze by Lincoln Child. Near the Arctic Circle, some ancient preserved creature is found. Is it the greatest scientific discovery of our time, or a monster that must not be awoken? Fast-moving, lots of characters, capable writing.

#30: Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler. I have liked Anne Tyler since I was a kid. Her novels are well-written easy reads, with quirky characters in odd situations. In this one, a 61-year old man is attacked in his home and becomes obsessed with remembering what happened. Forced into early retirement, he has plenty of time on his hands. His daughters, sister, ex-wife, and a surprising love interest harass him throughout the book.

I'm going to try to write more often! Maybe I can re-establish the habit of posting almost every day.

BABIES!

2010-07-26T12:45:00.004-06:00

First of all, our baby appears to be a GIRL! I had been nervous about having a boy (because they're so wild and I don't have a lot of little-boy experience) but then I got used to the idea, and then I fell in love with the idea, and I was really surprised to hear we have a little girl coming!

And she is really big! According to the sonogram measurements, she is in the 95th percentile. I will be tested for gestational diabetes, which worried me at first, but now I have found out that most pregnant women are tested for it. Also, that type of diabetes is usually not that big of a deal, unless you're obese or have some other issues, and I am not even overweight and don't have any other pregnancy-related issues. We just won't talk about other kinds of issues for now.

She may just be big, because Jason and I are both around 6 feet tall. And Jason weighed over 10 pounds when he was born. Plus, those measurements are imperfect. So I'm not worrying about GD unless I find out that I have it. And I'm not thinking about the delivery of a giant baby yet -- I have plenty of time to deal with that terrifying prospect!

But it is a good additional reason to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. It is so easy to let myself have lots of treats! I deserve them, come on! But for good health, the baby and I need the best nutrition I can get, so I'm trying to be a better eater.

Our little girl is also super active! Both times we have seen her on the sonogram screens, she has been twisting and somersaulting and throwing her arms over her head. It took about an hour for our sonographer to get the 8 measurements he needed. I think it often takes about 20 or 30 minutes. But our little wiggler would not hold still long enough to be measured. And I had NOT just had any caffiene or sugar -- imagine if I had!

In other baby news, we have had some squatters in our back yard. Aren't they cute?

Little cottontail rabbits! All they want to do is eat my whole garden and dig lots of holes in our yard. Awwww, so cute! When I spotted the first one amongst the cucumber plants, I was simultaneously SO mad (we've been fighting to keep the parents out of the yard since we moved in) and FILLED with a desire to pick it up and pet it and try to tame it and keep it as a pet.

Don't worry -- I didn't touch it. Jason put on gloves and caught it (it screamed when he picked it up!) and then we found two more lurking around. We carried them a few blocks away and let them out in an open space area. According to the internet, they are big enough to survive on their own. I just hope they can't find us again. Then they'll want to have THEIR babies in our yard, and you know how quickly they multiply! They only gestate for one month and can have up to 12 babies in a litter.

Hopefully they enjoy their new home enough that they don't come back.

Goodbye, cutie!

New House: Third Month

2010-07-01T10:59:00.002-06:00

Here is the painted loft. Our niece helped with this room, too. The color is called Spa Blue, and it may be the brightest color in our house. We hope to build a big built-in bookcase in the niche where the books are currently sitting. It will be floor-to-ceiling and fill in that whole area. In this photo, all the books are two-deep on the shelves. The envisioned built-in should house all the books in single rows AND leave some empty spaces for displaying things.

Of course it's also possible that this area will fill up with toys and kid stuff. :)

New House: Third Month

2010-07-01T10:54:00.003-06:00

Our second bathroom is designed for kids. The counter is about 6 inches lower than in our master bath and the tub is really low for kids to climb in and out. That will be great for our little guy or girl -- until he or she grows up! Our kids may be taller than we are, and we're both around 6 feet tall. Oh well, we tall people know all about backaches from leaning down.

Our niece came over to earn some cash and help us out with this room. At that time, the smell of our low-odor paint was still making me nauseated after about half an hour. The color is Misty Surf.

It was so nice to have this room done before my mom came to visit! I'd say this bathroom was one of the dirtiest looking rooms in the house, and now it looks clean and sharp.

New House: Third Month

2010-07-01T10:44:00.004-06:00

Here I am painting in the front room. The wall on the left is Secret Passage, and the one to the right hasn't been painted yet in this photo.

Here you can see the two different greys: Secret Passage and Silver Charm. At some times of day, the two walls look like they are the same color because of the lighting.

Here's the front door with our new pendant light (the old one was the brassy metal that isn't our style). The darker grey wall is adjacent to my life-risking yellow wall.

We put our old furniture in this room for now, and we barely use it. Eventually we'll figure out what we want to do with it.

The Less-Bad Evening

2010-06-30T20:05:00.003-06:00

So, supposedly the writer of the email has been chewed out by phone, and supposedly he feels very sorry for sending the email. It was supposed to be a joke about my husband, and it was only accidentally a degradation of me, you see. So I'm supposed to feel sorry for him because he feels so terrible. Well, I don't. I'm glad that he feels badly and I hope he is really ashamed of himself.

And I talked to my sister on the phone, who knows that when I'm feeling really upset and like I've been harmed in some way, I just need someone to listen and be appalled with me! Don't start giving advice! Don't try to convince me that it's not that bad! Maybe you can LATER, but at first, just take my side!! Thanks, sister. I really needed that.

And I slept for a couple hours and feel a lot better. Though now I'm ravenous and I sure wish I had a chocolate baked good to eat for supper. :)

The best news is, I think I'm all cried out, finally. But for now, I'm keeping today as The Worst Day, hopefully never to be topped. And I did several loads of laundry while I was upset, so at least I don't have that waiting for me!

Also, if you're ever having a terrible day, I recommend watching some kind of insipid TV show, if you can. For me, it was a few episodes of The Hills, a show about stupid rich kids whose parents buy them cool jobs in LA. Oh, boo hoo! The rich girls have such trouble meeting decent guys and getting internships at makeup companies! Wahhh! It makes your own problems seem more substantial, valid, and worth brooding over.

The Worst Day?

2010-06-30T13:12:00.004-06:00

Or does it just feel like it?

A relative of my husband sent a very nasty, disgusting, demeaning email about me to a bunch of his family members, and to me. It's supposedly a joke. Maybe someone would think it was funny, but I really can't imagine who. The One Person who should be even angrier than I am about it has not said one fucking word in response.

I got in a car wreck earlier this week -- a perky blonde girl hit my car. She became much less perky when I wrote down her license plate and demanded her insurance card. This morning the insurance guy barged in, without any appointment, on my saying goodbye to my visiting family! I appreciate their excitement to settle the claim, but they should not inconvenience ME to get it done quicker -- their customer is at fault. Now the insurance company guy says they're most likely going to declare the car totaled. It's old and not worth very much.

THEN I got a rejection for a job today. I was unbelievably over-qualified for it. It would have been so fucking easy to do with the distraction of the upcoming baby. I guarantee you, without exaggeration, I was the most qualified and experienced applicant they had and I should have definitely been offered the job. Instead, I received a fucking EMAIL rejection. That piece of shit could not even take five minutes to show me the respect of CALLING ME?

Oh, I'm so tired and I know that's making it worse. But I'm too upset to sleep. But I won't feel better until I sleep.

I wish someone would make me some chocolate cupcakes! That is probably the only thing that could help.

More Books! #10 - 22

2010-06-24T14:45:00.003-06:00

I've been doing some reading this spring, but since I read some of these books a couple months ago, I can't remember too many details about them.

#10: You Suck by Christopher Moore
I think Moore is really intelligently funny. This one is about vampires in San Francisco.

#11: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
This trilogy of books totally deserves its Best Seller status. They are fun, exciting, thrilling, and really well written. The plots are complicated and layered, but Larsson keeps them under control. The characters are well-developed. My only complaint is that there are a lot of horrible sex crimes in them, and I'd prefer not to read so much of that.

#12: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
I tore through this one even faster than the first.

#13: Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
I really like the books by these two authors. They are thrillers with interesting (though absolutely unbelievable) plots and great characters. Special Agent Pendergast is a long-time favorite character who appears in this one.

#14: Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
This one felt rushed, like they'd often cheat to advance the plot by suddenly being in a new location and Agent Pendergast would explain to another character how he followed a clue to arrive there. Still fun to read -- if you're looking for excellent writing, you probably shouldn't look to genre novels in the first place :)

#15: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Excellent novel about early civil rights-era relationships between those Southerners who employed black servants and the servants themselves. Not too upsetting for us sensitive types.

#16: Frankenstein: Dead and Alive by Dean Koontz
The third installment in this series of sci-fi thrillers. Frankenstein's monster is alive and well in modern times and is on a mission to destroy his creator! Fun, fast read.

#17: Jazz by Toni Morrison
Morrison is an awesome writer, but I felt ambiguous about this book. It left me kind of unhappy at the end. (Of course I also finished it on an annoying flight when I was exhausted -- possibly no book could have made feel happy at that point.) The main plot of this one revolves around a cheating husband who kills his mistress and makes his wife go crazy, so it's not a light-hearted read. I guess I'm in the mood for more light-heartedness right now.

#18: The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
How many times have I read this book? I first read it at about age 12, when our family got a used copy of it at a book exchange in my Dad's workplace. It's a gritty crime novel written in 1952 about a deputy sheriff who plays dumb to hide his inner sociopath. With this reading, I noticed multiple parallels to the TV character, Dexter Morgan, who I also love. They are both told by their fathers that they are sociopaths and that they can't ever live normal lives and have to hide in plain sight. Dexter pretends to be kind of wimpy, letting people walk all over him, while our deputy acts like a moron, talking mostly in cliches and pretending he just made them up. Like, "I've always believed that every cloud has a silver lining!" Once their respective fathers die, each man has to face new problems without his sociopathy mentor, and they struggle with it.

#19: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
A lovely novel that focuses much more on philosophy than action.

#20: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
A great little mystery novel told from the perspective of a 12-year old girl in NY in the 70s. I will definitely be reading this one again.

#21: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Excellent, hilarious and beautiful short stories. Moore is a great writer.

#22: The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
A big novel by the author of The Historian (about vampires!). I recommend both highly. In this one, a psychiatrist/artist unravels the breakdown of his artist patient. He traces the root of the problem all the way back to the 1870s and becomes far too enmeshed in his patient's life and relationships.

And I'm reading a bunch of books about babies, pregnancy, exercising while pregnant, baby name books, still working on War and Peace, and also devouring the third Stieg Larsson book.

Happy Summer!

2010-06-21T17:20:00.002-06:00

Hi all,

Sorry I've been ignoring the blog for so long. I had a secret and it was tough to avoid mentioning it, and the secret itself made me tired and that made it harder to write anything.

We're having a baby!!

There it is. I'm so excited, you guys! We're 15 weeks along. In 5 weeks we'll be able to find out if it's a girl or a boy, and we want to know. 5 weeks goes by so quickly AND YET SO SLOWLY.

I feel simultaneously like:

I am not ready. I need 5 more years before I can be a good parent.

AND

Hurry up and get here, Baby! I can't wait another second for you!!

So, that's the big news. I have lots of other stuff to tell you, but it kind of pales in comparison.

Try this:

We got married!!

And this:

We spent our honeymoon in Las Vegas!!

See? Also big news, but they seem a little less big, right?

Okay, I'll be back soon. Now that morning sickness has let me out of its evil clutches, I have some more painting photos to share.

Juror #11 Update

2010-05-27T21:01:00.002-06:00

Well, I went back to court the second day to hear closing arguments and go into jury deliberation. We were divided about 50-50 on whether or not Mr. Suspicious Mustache was guilty. It was fun to see how the defense attorney's attempts to create doubt had worked -- until we really read what the law said and it was clear that none of the issues that could cause doubt had anything to do with the decision we had to make.

For instance, he tried to make the detectives look stupid because they couldn't remember what a bunch of other cops did 9 months ago. Well, all the detectives were testifying to was that there was a gun in the house in a certain location and that the victim had called the police. There was no doubt about either of those things. The defendant didn't take the stand, so we had no reason to doubt the events as told to us by the attorneys, victim, and detectives.

The defense attorney also tried to say that maybe the victim had been attacking Mr. Mustache, but there was no evidence of that at all. Mr. Mustache simply pulled a gun on his wife in the middle of an argument and the only believable reason to do that is to scare her. That means he menaced her, and since a gun is a deadly weapon, it was a felony and he's in pretty big trouble.

So yeah, my side convinced the not-guilties to come over to our side.

The lesson is: fight fair! Don't pull guns on people.

Alternate lesson: jury duty is kind of interesting, besides it being your literal duty to serve your country and contribute to our legal system, which you might appreciate some day. [Sorry for the mini-lecture, but it was astounding what crazy extent people go to to avoid jury duty!]

One More Post About Hail

2010-05-27T20:47:00.003-06:00

Here's a nice action shot

Our yard after the first round of hail. During the actual storms, it looked like popcorn popping all over outside.

They weren't quite golf ball size, but maybe ping pong balls

It looked pretty cool on the driveway

After the first hailstorm, Jason and I drove around the neighborhoods a few blocks away from ours. There were broken windshields everywhere. But even MORE ubiquitous were the insurance agents who flooded the neighborhood! They strode purposefully up and down driveways and sidewalks, proudly clutching their binders and clipboards, and looking around intently.

Then it started to hail again, so we hurried home to the safety of our garage, from which we watched the littler hail fall and fall. The noise! The freakishness of it all! We were so lucky that we didn't have any damage besides the poor, poor garden.

Tomato Before and After

2010-05-27T20:45:00.003-06:00

Oh, so strong and healthy! They smelled like summer.

After the hail, I couldn't even find some of the plants. They were obliterated!

My Poor Garden

2010-05-27T20:29:00.003-06:00

First all we had was a big plot of rock-covered ground. We had to shovel and throw and kick rock after rock out of the way. Then, the annoying weed cloth underneath dulled our knives and was very stubborn about wanting to stay in place.

Jason bought wood and cut it and nailed it to the ground with rebar or something, and we dug the whole thing with shovels and added 30 bags of compost and manure and garden soil. The soil still looked a lot like sand.

But I happily planted my 10 tomato plants and a dozen peppers (I want to make salsa this summer or fall!) and tomatillos, potatoes, strawberries, plus herbs, cucumbers, melons, corn, peas, lettuce, carrots, spinach, garlic, and onions.

And then the wind blew like it would never stop and my tomatoes and peppers were beaten into the ground, but they still might have made a comeback!

And then we were pelted with rain and small hail and then medium-sized hail and then rain and rain and wind and then a whole bunch more small hail. Only one tomato survives, and it looks incredibly sad, like I do. Wahh! I want a nice garden!!

Now I'll have to buy more tomato transplants and probably settle for Big Boy or Better Boy or whatever they sell everywhere. And I'll see if I have to reseed everything. Who knows where
any of the seeds ended up.

Book 9: A Play of Treachery

2010-05-21T10:43:00.002-06:00

This is a mystery novel set in 1436 in France. Its star is a traveling actor who has been convinced to become a spy for England.

It's written just fine and was a great relaxation-distraction for me while we were moving. There's nothing wrong with it at all, but it just didn't grab me in the way that makes me hunt down all the books by the same author. I feel more entranced by the female doctor in Ariana Franklin's books, which take place in 12th century Europe. I guess I'm not a huge historical fiction fan, so her series pretty much fills my desire for that genre.

But if you love historical mysteries, you should check out Margaret Frazer's books. She has several that feature the actor-spy, Joliffe the Player.

I'm Juror #11

2010-05-05T18:56:00.003-06:00

Guess what. In March, I received a jury summons in the mail. This week, I just barely remembered in time. So, I called the phone number on Tuesday night to see if I really had to go, and I did.

Then I spent literally hours waiting to find out if I would be chosen. AND I WAS!

I can't tell you about the case, but I can tell you a few things about the day and the situation.

1. Someone pushes his glasses up above his eyes when he doesn't need them for seeing. Not on top of his head, sunglasses-style. Just up above his eyebrows.

2. Someone has a suspicious mustache.

3. I could do as good a job as the lawyers, and I'm terrified of courtroom lawyering.

4. Someone keeps mispronouncing legal terms. Someone who should know better!

5. Just like law school, and like The Law in general, jury duty is a little bit interesting but mostly boring, boring, mind-numbingly boring.

I have to go back tomorrow to see what we decide. I already know what I think, but who knows what is going on in anyone else's mind?

New House DAY 29

2010-04-28T17:45:00.005-06:00

Well, since we both went back to work, we haven't been making such huge strides in changing the house. I tried to put my books away, but I need more shelves. We plan to build some custom ones in the garage/workshop, but we don't know WHEN yet. Probably this spring or summer. Also, a custom desk for Jason's office, including storage space for all his computer language books.

The front room looks different, though it's still not done being painted.
Here it is before, looking down from the loft:

And during:

The light grey on the left is Secret Passage, our most-used color in the house. The darker grey in the middle is Silver Charm. The yellow on the right is Cornmeal. I've had seconds of doubt about choosing so many different colors, but it doesn't feel like a Clown House around here yet. (Is there such a thing as a Clown House? Like a Clown Car, but 49 clowns have to live there together, sleeping in some wild bunkbed set?)

We have a different, non-brassy light to hang above the front door. Brassy isn't really our taste, so we've had to replace light fixtures, doorknobs, door hinges, and even those springy door stoppers. We have more to replace. All those details add up, in money and in time. It's incredible how many details I would like to change! This house seemed so clean and simple before we moved in. Now it seems filthy (don't look too closely in any unpainted room, or you'll see dirt and hair and dust and stains in the corners, and on the doors, and on the walls) and it seems just inundated with BRASSY.

Anyway, we've also been moving rocks off of our garden plot, and Jason mowed the lawn, and we've unpacked and organized and now we only have 3,052 more things to do before we can have a housewarming party. :) It's still coming along.

New House DAY 16

2010-04-16T10:59:00.004-06:00

Outside, I planted 5 rose bushes and 3 raspberry bushes. The before and after photos don't look that much different, but imagine a few months from now! Or a couple of years! Hopefully our yard will fill in with greenery and look like a garden that's not mostly a rock garden.

I would like to see a lot more plants and less fence. My plan is to use mostly plants that make food or flowers, but it may evolve over time to include plants that look good all year long.

Inside, I put a first coat of light grey on the lower parts of two walls in the front room. I'll cover the tops and do a second coat on Day 17.

New House DAY 15

2010-04-16T10:47:00.004-06:00

I finished the big yellow wall and also took the yellow around the corner and up the stairs. The tricky part is getting the very top of the wall, above the lowest stairs. You can't reach up very high from those low stairs.

I reached part of the wall by leaning around the corner from the big yellow wall. I could reach some of it by using the ladder safely on the stairs. But there was a triangle of white that was left, that I couldn't quite reach. I became very stubborn and determined to finish that whole wall!

Dad, don't read this: I found a painting tool with a handle on it so I could stretch farther, took some long, slow breaths, and stood completely on top of that ladder, on the stairs, balancing carefully. I s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out my left arm with that corner-painting tool and ever-so-carefully covered the last white spot! I said aloud, "I'm doing it!"

And I only got a tiny bit on the ceiling, but I still had to climb back up to the top of that ladder with my ceiling paint to touch up the ceiling.

It was all worth it: the heart palpitations, the terror of some lawn-maintenance company ringing the doorbell and startling me off the ladder, the unnatural contortions to reach farther than a body is made to reach. It looks pretty good, and I didn't even come close to falling off or tipping over.

Man, my leg muscles were sore that night from tensing so much to keep my balance!

Isn't that ladder cool? It straightens out to be 16 ft tall (in that form it can only lean against a wall), or it can be 8 ft tall and stand alone, or it can be like 5 feet tall for easier storage, or it can be staggered to use on stairs. I couldn't have done it without that ladder.

New House DAY 14

2010-04-16T10:42:00.004-06:00

I painted the narrow walls between the kitchen and the front room, making them look finished. I also started painting the big yellow wall. It's 17 feet tall, so it was a little scary to climb up high enough to reach the top. But I got used to being on the ladder, once I felt sure that it wasn't going to tip backwards or slide out from under me.

This shows the small ladder since I was too focused on not falling to my death to take a photo of the big one.

New House DAY 13

2010-04-16T10:37:00.004-06:00

I painted the little hallway between the TV room, laundry room, basement door, and garage. Now the TV room really seems finished.

Let's look at a before and after of the kitchen, since that's more fun than a bunch of doors.

Pretty good!

New House DAY 12

2010-04-16T10:33:00.003-06:00

We moved more things over from our townhouse, including our bikes. Then we went for a bike ride! Our neighborhood is great for riding bikes, walking, and even jogging if I decide to try that again (3rd time's the charm, right?)

We did some unpacking, and even some relaxing.

New House DAY 11

2010-04-16T10:28:00.002-06:00

I finished painting my office and started unpacking it.

I wanted it to be fun and creative-feeling, not just a place where I slave at my computer. Even though it turned out looking like a boy's room, I like it well enough to keep it.

The colors are Cool Blue at the top, Blue Silk in the middle, and Sea Sage on the bottom. Green is the most creativity-stimulating color, so I wanted to include it in my room.

New House DAY 10

2010-04-10T20:24:00.002-06:00

We got our appliances!! Won't our kitchen look great once we get it cleaned up?

Also, I finished painting our closet and started unpacking my clothes and hanging them up in there. And I had so much fun seeing my shoes again! I have been wearing the same two pairs for 10 days now, and it was like a reunion when I got the rest out of their moving boxes.

Also, I started painting my office, but I haven't taken any photos yet. I am very excited to get my office put together! I will be able to have JUST an office/sewing room, because all my home gym stuff is in the basement, and all my books can live in the loft, and my clothes can be in the bedroom closet. I could actually put the sewing machine in the loft, too, but I like to watch movies while I sew, and I have a brand new cool TV for my office, thanks to Jason and thanks to an old TV getting broken during the move.

New House DAY 9

2010-04-10T20:18:00.003-06:00

So, our appliances did not arrive on time. Angry, bitter, threatening words were exchanged with a salesman, and OUR salesman, who had the day off, called us from his house to work things out. *Someone* was supposed to have called us on Tuesday (Day 7) to let us know that there was a delay and we would not get our stuff until Friday (Day 10). *Someone* did not call us. We got a discount.

So, we did a few things that day with our frustration energy:

Jason painted the baseboards in his office. The color is Ancient Bog! Sparky, do you like that name? I sure do. Ancient Bog. I like saying it theatrically.

I received some roses and tomato transplants via UPS (plus I brought over my pepper seedlings from the old place -- there are bell peppers and three kinds of hot peppers for making salsa, plus tomatillos).

And I laid down the first coat of paint in our closet. It's called Blue Silk. It starts out such a pale blue that it looks off-white. But as they say on every home improvement show, It'll Dry Darker.

New House DAY 8

2010-04-08T10:59:00.002-06:00

Jason grouted the whole backsplash with grey grout. He started with a bag of powdered grout and stirred in water with his power drill and the grout paddle attachment we bought.

Several times throughout the process, he stirred in a little more water (with the drill + paddle) to keep it pliable.

He squished the grout in between each tile, using his fingers and the grout float (a kind of paddle with a handle on it). Then he waited a little while, maybe 10 or 20 minutes, and scraped off some of the extra stuff. After a couple of hours, we wiped away more of the grout and could see how it turned out.

Then we cleaned up and cleaned up and cleaned up, but there is still grey powder and grit on absolutely everything in the kitchen. Maybe after 42 more cleanings, it will be gone.

In a couple days, we will apply the grout sealer.

While Jason was grouting, I painted the laundry room/bathroom. It's greyish-purple, or purplish-grey, depending on the lighting.

Even in this photo, you can see how different the colors can look.

Well, we were SUPPOSED to hear yesterday from our appliance deliverers and find out their estimated time of arrival today. We never got the call. Are they coming today or not? We are tired of eating out so much! (Part of the problem was having the kitchen messed up while we tiled, which we were hurrying up to finish up before they install the microwave above the oven.) We have really missed having a microwave, too. So, they better bring our stuff today or I am going to feel pretty grumpy.

Are they here yet?

New House DAY 7

2010-04-08T00:56:00.003-06:00

We finished putting up the backsplash.

Jason found out what kind of tool we needed to cut the tiles in half so they would fit around the window sill. It's called a Wheeled Glass Mosaic Tile Nipper. We got it at Hobby Lobby for around $19, but you can order them online from various places if you're not in a big hurry. It's important that you get the wheeled kind for glass tiles. The regular kind will crush the glass.

New House DAY 6

2010-04-07T23:38:00.003-06:00

We started to tile the kitchen backsplash!

We used glass mosaic tile, which I think is really fun. It's surely more work than bigger tiles, but I think it looks really cool.

Here's what we did:

1. Planned to use TileMat, a double-sided tape invented to stick tile backsplashes onto walls. I loved the idea of it -- no mortar! But it just came out on the market this year, and the reviews I read mostly said things like, "my tiles fell off!" So we talked to guy in the Home Depot tile aisle. He does tiling as a second job, and he does not approve of the TileMat. But he got us set up with Quick Set mortar (premixed) and all the tools and stuff we needed for tiling. We got our tile sheets (I think they're 11-inch squares), the Quick Set mortar, a mortar tool with small grooves for the mosaic tile (smaller tiles need smaller grooves), grey grout powder that must be mixed with water, a grout float, a grout paddle for attaching to a drill and using for mixing, grout sealer, appropriately sized spacers, and a pack of giant sponges.

- 1. Jason had already picked off the old tiles using mostly a screwdriver to get under the edge and a hammer to knock them loose. We also had a tiny crowbar, but I don't think it actually came in handy much. In our kitchen, they mostly didn't use too much mortar on their mismatched beige tiles.

2. Jason used a power sander to flatten out the wall where there were lumps of mortar and, inexplicably, caulk. Where needed, he filled out a few minor divots with spackle.

3. We spread a thin coat of mortar on the wall and then scraped across the wall with the grooved mortar-scraping tool. After much fussing with difficult-to-reach corners, we discovered too late that you can (oh so obviously) apply the mortar to the back of the tile sheet if you can't reach the wall easily.

4. Now, it's a tiny bit tricky putting up the tile sheet because it's a little bit heavy and the tiles want to slump down and squish together at the bottom. So you have to align it at the bottom and then kind of stretch it upwards as you stick it to the wall. It's not super difficult, but if you want your rows to line up, you have to pay attention to the tendency to slump.

5. It starts looking pretty damn cool as soon as you get the first sheet put up, which encourages you to keep bending over in uncomfortable positions to stick up more and more tiles!

6. We got a call from Jason's brother saying he could help us RIGHT NOW with his huge truck to move our furniture from the townhouse to the new house, so we said: Okay, then.

And since he is a badass moving instigator, we now live in our new house and have a sort-of living room and everything.

And Francis the Cat has been an excellent mover once again. He was telling me ALL ABOUT IT on the drive from the old place to the new place, but once he arrived, he checked everything out and settled right in. He has already carried his toy robot all over the place, sat on all the counters, kept us company while cleaning and tiling and resting, and thrown up a few times. He's a good mover.

New House DAY 5

2010-04-05T11:26:00.001-06:00

I don't have much to show you, but I did finish touch-ups on the ceiling and walls and I took the tape down. Jason put back up some of the blinds. We put the outlet covers back on, and it feels like a real room.

I didn't get to the fireplace and trim yesterday. We went to Lowe's and then showed the place to a couple friends. It was so nice to sit in the sunshine and talk with them for a while! But today we will be back to our normal, long day of work.

Jason took the tape off in his office, too, and it looks great. He still has to do the trim and decide whether or not to paint the ceiling (that is the worst job!) and put his doors back up.

On the agenda for today:
* mortar and affix tile backsplash in kitchen
* paint fireplace and trim
* paint hallway from garage to living room

Oh, and I went to 7-11 last night and the man working there was wearing a kilt and he rides a bike to work. I overheard him talking to another customer, and I believe the gist was: THE BRAND NEW 7-11 IS ALREADY HAUNTED!! I will have to research that plot of land and see if it used to be an Indian burial ground. Also, did you know that you can't buy lottery tickets after midnight? How long has it been since I was in a gas station after midnight?
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New House DAY 4

2010-04-04T10:31:00.002-06:00

I painted the other wall in the living/dining/kitchen Crocodile Tears green. When I put the first coat of paint up, it looked horrible! I think it will look good in the end, though.

In the kitchen, I finished my work above the cabinets. I think I'll only have to walk on the counters one more time to get the remaining tape down.

Here is the glass mosaic tile backsplash we are going to use. It's called Urban Camouflage. We will work on that this week. We want to get it done before our appliances are delivered on Thursday.

Jason's office is coming along nicely (it's further along than this). He also changed all our locks so that no unscrupulous realtor can get in our house. The seller's realtor STILL has not removed the lock box from our screen door. His sign is still there, too (though we pulled it out of the yard and leaned it up against the porch). Maybe that's normal, but it is very rude. We don't want his crap at our house!

Today I plan to touch up the ceiling, paint the mantle, and do all the trim. Then I can take a decent photo in the daylight and we can all see how the colors look.

The work just never ends, you guys. We have to put the blinds back up, but they are either dirty or sun-stained. Should we take them all the way apart and paint each piece? And the dining room blinds have flowers on them, so we'll replace them with plain ones some day -- but should we go ahead and do it now? You can buy them at Home Depot and Lowe's. We so badly want to move forward into other rooms, yet we want everything done properly.

Also, I feel old. My body aches and my right hand is a little swollen and just wants to make a claw. Both thumbs hurt from scraping off that wallpaper border, and another finger has cracked in the corner by the nail. My legs are bruised from leaning against the ladder rungs. My feet are tired. My elbows feel tennis-elbowy. My shoulders are hunched up by my ears.

It's still fun.

New House DAY 3

2010-04-03T10:11:00.005-06:00

First I'll go back to Day 2 for a moment and show you that Jason started painting his office. It will have a darker green color on the bottom half of the wall.

On Day 3, we painted some grey walls in the TV room (the color is called "Secret Passage"). Jason took down the old ceiling fan and dining room light and put up new ones.

Before: off-white

After: Secret Passage Grey

I painted the walls grey above the kitchen cabinets (I will do a second coat today). Jason removed all of the mis-matched existing backsplash, which consisted of two different shades of beige tiles and was sloppily done.

Before:

During:

New House DAY 2

2010-04-02T09:18:00.006-06:00

The new house came with this wallpaper border in the kitchen and dining room. I did not, do not, and will not like it.

On Day 2, I battled with that wallpaper border and I WON! Doesn't the kitchen look nicer without it? Well, it's full of moving stuff, but don't the WALLS look better?

When our first visitors stopped by, I was crouched on top of the refrigerator to reach the last bit of wallpaper above it. The visitor were completely unfazed.

And I painted the pantry Cornmeal Yellow.

And I painted the living room ceiling. (No photo available, but imagine that it was whitish before, and now it's whitish.)

Discovery of the day: Our circuit breaker box is on the outside of the house, setting up the perfect serial killer home invasion scenario. Some stormy night, a maniac sneaks into the back yard and shuts off the power. We have to go out in the rain with weak flashlights to try to see what's going on. That's when he sneaks in the house! A game of creepy cat-and-mouse ensues. But what he doesn't know is that we are a rare breed of liberals -- the gun-totin' kind! With my Concealed Carry License, I could be packing heat almost any time, anywhere! Don't mess with my breaker box, maniacs, or you'll be sorry. Plus all the hours I've logged doing kickboxing -- surely punching and kicking the air translates into real ass-kicking abilities, right?

New House DAY 1

2010-04-01T00:17:00.003-06:00

Today we bought our own house!

Here is the summary of our day:

*Closing

*Packed up cars and unloaded at new house, measured for appliances and paint, cleaned some cabinets

*Bought new kitchen and laundry appliances

*Bought tile for backsplash, mortar, grout, and tools

*From a different home improvement store, bought paint and painting tools and light fixtures

*Picked up some beers

*Cleaned kitchen and pantry and partially removed my nemesis, Wallpaper Border

Items found while cleaning:
1. Teensy bottle of nitroglycerin tablets (drink lots of water while taking these pills!)

2. Voodoo curse razor blade in drawer (the curse goes something like, "You bought our house for less than we paid for it. We hereby wish to befall you a horrible razor blade cut when you are cleaning our hair out of the kitchen drawers!") Don't worry! I waylaid the curse by picking up a lucky penny in the Home Depot parking lot earlier and I totally found the razor blade without cutting my hand open.

Tomorrow: Day 2, obviously. I plan to paint the kitchen, dining room, and TV room, which all run together, all open-floor-plan-y. First I have to remove the rest of the cursed wallpaper border, of course. I'll report back.
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PLEASE, Sparky!

2010-03-29T15:06:00.001-06:00

Dear Sparky,

Will you and your twin sister please, please, Pretty PLEASE move into these back-to-back twin houses??????

They are mirror twins, just like you two!

Remember when you explained to me what mirror twins are? How you and your sister have the same contact lens prescriptions, only you have to put the lenses in opposite eyes? And you blew my mind?

Okay, well, please consider moving here. You could teach me so much more about twinship and twindom and twinny twin-twin stuff. We'd only be a few miles away, even after we move to our new house. Maybe your sister could play pranks on us by popping by and pretending to be you.

Do you ever try to fool your kid, or hers? Does it work?

And you could totally bring your little sister and Sparky's Problem and Sparky Jr. along, too! It would be so much fun.

Books 7 & 8: People With Dirty Hands & From the Ground Up

2010-03-22T16:54:00.002-06:00

I've read a few hundred pages of War and Peace, but I've been so distracted with The House that I'm having trouble spending time with it. So, I quickly re-read a couple of my favorite books about gardening.

People with Dirty Hands, by Robin Chotzinoff, is actually about gardeners rather than gardening. Chotzinoff writes little portraits of various gardeners she meets (and some people who are not necessarily gardeners, but who are involved with plants). There is a tomatophile, chili growers and roasters, rose lovers, urban gardeners, and a Louisiana witch doctor, among others.

It's fun and funny and kind of implies that that gardeners are supposed to be a little kookie.

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden is by Amy Stewart. She tells of learning how to garden while living in Santa Cruz, California. Her climate is quite a bit different from mine, but some of her lessons definitely transfer to my yard: test the soil and amend it before you start planting, arrange plants so they receive the proper amount of light, and make peace with a garden that looks imperfect.

Stewart also provides a few recipes and specific pruning tips.

Both books also give some resources for ordering seeds and plants (though People is 14 years old).

I've been doing lots of looking at seed catalogs and plant websites and imagining my soon-to-be garden. I'm also trying to amass local info on when to plant different things, and what should be started inside first, and how much to water, and and...

My paint colors have been chosen for weeks, and I know what I want in my garden. Now all I need are the keys!
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New House?

2010-03-15T14:20:00.001-06:00

It seems like I haven't been here forever, but it's only been a week. Phew!

My work was crazy-busy for a few weeks, AND we are under contract on a house, so that has been making FEEL super busy even though I'm mostly just moving in there in my mind.

Now, it is only like 90% certain that this will be our house. But our hearts already live there. Within two weeks, it should be completely settled one way or the other. Then I can REALLY start gushing and planning (okay, I've already planned out almost every detail of the entire property, but let's pretend that I am holding myself back just in case it doesn't happen).

Here is the view from just inside the front door.

The sellers have allegedly removed those peel-n-stick mirror squares from the wall AND repaired the wall underneath. We'll see.

Please note the wallpaper border in the kitchen. I'll be removing that on Day 1 or Day 2. Hopefully it will come down much more easily and quickly than did the USA VARSITY SPORTS border in our current place.

Here's part of the back yard. There is some grass and there is a lot of rock landscaping. We are thrilled with the rock because we don't have to do anything to maintain it right now. BUT, we can just move it and cut through the plastic liner and put in trees, bushes, flowers, and my garden.

Did you already know that my destiny is to be a Crazy Gardening Lady? Well, get ready for lots of posts about it. I'm window shopping online and in catalogs and have already picked out tons of plants that I HAVE to have right away. Lots of flowers for cutting, and flowers for leaving outside, and things that smell good, and things that are pretty, and lots of food plants: berries, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, melons, grapes, herbs, and so on.

Of course I am also drawn to weird-looking plants, and I'm sure I will include some novelties in the yard.

And here is the advertised "Wet Bar" which is dry as a bone. It is enormous and quite perplexing. It is very tall, and it takes up most of that section of the basement, so where would people be hanging out? I don't know if we'll decide we can make it work, or if sledgehammers will finally be coming into our lives.

And here's our inspector, Jim, checking out the strange old washing machine. The machine does not have any knob for selecting the temperature of the water. ?????

Don't worry, we already chose all new appliances. AND we entered a drawing to win a bright red washer and dryer. If we win, I'll have to adjust my paint choices for the laundry room, but it will be totally worth it.

Okay, I swear I will work on Neighborhood Confessions and try to write a lot this week. Once we close on the house, I doubt I will be able to think about anything else for a month or a year or forever. Probably just a month a two. :)

Stuff in People's Houses

2010-03-08T09:07:00.001-07:00

We've been looking for a house to buy, and while poking around in people's homes, you find a lot of weird stuff. Like this maybe-dentist's chair in a basement. What was going on down there? They also left a tanning bed and treadmill stored in the garage, and a pair of strappy silver high heels by the door. Just in case!

What about this 1/2 lizesize white tiger, inexplicably hidden in a basement? If you go to the trouble of locating, buying, and transporting 1/2 lifesize white tiger to your house, I think you should display it proudly!

And this whole house looked like this: a huge mess of stuff everywhere. How do they think they'll ever sell this place when it's so full of mess? There was a VCR in the master bathtub.

Many of the houses we've looked at are only a few years old, but they look like a bunch of destructive teenage boys took out all their angst on the walls and their urine on the carpets for a decade. It's been really surprising to see how badly people treat their property!

We actually pretty much liked one house, but completely walked away when we went outside and the next door neighbor's bad dogs barked incessantly (stirring up ALL the dogs in the whole neighborhood, too). Fuck that. We do not like to listen to bad dogs barking non-stop (or even some-stop).

I'll keep you posted on our adventures in househunting.

Yeah, that's more formal

2010-03-03T22:25:00.002-07:00

At my job, sometimes I check other people's editing work and sometimes they check mine. Sometimes I make mistakes or miss something, and sometimes my colleagues make outrageous errors!

Just tonight, someone had left the mistake "prehistoric to gambling" instead of replacing it with "predisposed to gambling." By the way, the speaker was saying that Asians gamble more than any other people. Maybe the editor thought that Asians' love of gambling is rooted way back in time.

This is my latest favorite "correction" of my own work:

I prefer the more formal “without further adieu” vs. “ado”

It just doesn't get much stupider.

Book 6: The Camelot Caper

2010-02-20T16:35:00.002-07:00

This is a mystery by Elizabeth Peters, written in 1969. It's an amusing, light, quick read.

I needed one last quick read before starting War and Peace! I'm on page 47 out of 1,405.

Book 5: My Life in France

2010-02-13T16:21:00.003-07:00

My Life in France is a memoir by the chef Julia Child (written with her great-nephew). It's a very readable collection of stories from France in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. She also talks about visiting and living in the U.S., Germany, and Norway.

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of talk about food and about writing her books, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2. It is especially interesting to read about her experiences with making the first successful cooking TV show (when she and her husband had hardly ever watched TV).

Julia is so likeable in this book. She is a hard-working perfectionist. She forgives her co-authors even while still irritated by their quirks and failings. She seems like someone who just dives right in and goes for it, whatever IT is. I could use a little more of that right now.

Great light reading, especially if you like food or traveling.

Book 4: Stranger in a Strange Land

2010-02-13T16:10:00.002-07:00

This 1961 sci-fi novel by Robert A. Heinlein is pretty fun. Picture it: one day in the future, a team of astronauts successfully lands on Mars. A baby is born and due to all sorts of complicated circumstances, the adults all die. The human baby is raised by Martians. 25 years later (or so) another human expedition lands on Mars with much-improved technology. They meet the Martians and take the human Martian back to Earth.

Valentine Michael Smith, the human Martian, knows how to use his mind to communicate telepathically, move things with telekinesis, and control his own heartbeat and body temperature. He can teach these things to the rest of the humans, if they're willing to learn.

He thinks that our ideas about nudity and monogamy are ridiculous (what? this was written by a man as the buttoned-down 1950s concluded? and there's a huge -- though not explicit -- focus on sex, sex, sex?)

This is pretty good for a sci-fi book. It's always fun for me to see what people thought life would be like NOW. Heinlein foresaw traveling to Mars, self-driven flying cars, indoor grass as a very luxurious carpet, synthetic foods, world government, and all the same legal complications and social mores as in the '60s.

The no reading experiment was a failure!

2010-02-01T17:05:00.002-07:00

I read 100 pages.

They were very short pages, from Julia Child's My Life in France. My copy is a paperback, and there are a lot of empty spaces on the pages. I barely read at all!

But it was still a literal failure.

BUT, in another sense, a bigger-picture sense, the gist of it was a success. I noticed how many times I wished that I could just "take a break" from whatever pressure I was putting on myself and read for a while instead. If I'd been cleaning for a couple hours and was tired of it, I'd want to go sit down and read for a while. If I was trying to write and felt stuck, I'd want to go grab a book.

Escaping into some kind of made-up world is definitely a crutch for me. But I am not convinced that it's generally a bad one. Yes, sometimes I have read TOO much instead of doing things. I am now very aware of the way I feel when that urge to escape responsibility rears up, and I think I can deal with it a little bit better after this week.

Last week, I also did the same experiment with Ms. Internet and TV-as-background-noise. I also literally failed at cutting both of those out of my life, but I did cut way down AND notice what was going on with me when I retreated into either habit rather than face whatever horrible task I was "supposed" to be doing.

Here are some things that are horrible:
* figuring out what to do with my life
* finding the job that goes with "what to do with my life"
* vacuuming, especially the stairs

In summary, I'm labeling this failure "Pretty Much Good Enough."

--
In other news, tonight I am going to have *A Beer*

It has been a whole month without alcohol, and I am looking forward to having *A Beer*

It might be a 90 Schilling.

NO Reading?!?

2010-01-25T19:37:00.003-07:00

I'm using the book The Artist's Way, and so is my mom), to help me let loose my creativity and feel more confident. It's like creativity rehab. So far it's felt pretty useful. I'm writing in a journal every morning, to expel any crapola that might hold me back during the day. I'm thinking about what I was like as a child, and what I was like pre-lawschool, and what I'd like to be like tomorrow. It's a good experience.

Well, the INSANE assignment for this week is NO READING. Wha?? How will I -- What will I -- WHAT the WHAT?

Okay, I see her point. If I stop immersing myself in someone else's imaginary world, or their real world, or their perspective, maybe I'll DO things in real life. Maybe I'll work on my own book or finish that Giant Squid crochet pattern I've been sitting on for maybe a year. Maybe I'll use some fabric and patterns that are already in my house, waiting to be made into cute clothes!

So, I guess I get it. It does seem worthwhile. That said, I read 7 pages of a paperback today -- I couldn't help it! I'll try to do better the rest of the week. Only 6 more days. And tonight. And right now.

Am I allowed to proofread this post, JULIA CAMERON, you big jerk???
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Yes, Sew! Blanket

2010-01-25T19:29:00.001-07:00

A couple of Christmases ago, my sister-in-common-law, Patti, made me this No-Sew fleece blanket.

We use it all the time in the winter, when we're watching TV in our chilly living room. I decided to make one myself, since there are two of us. But I turned the idea on its head and sewed the heck out of it.

I pieced together several colors of fleece and sewed them into two big rectangles. I sewed the two big rectangles together, with the seams on the inside (though it could look cool to leave them on the outside).

I quilted the whole thing about 6 inches from the edges, pinked the edges, and voila!

Looks like it's cat-approved.

Samosa Pot Pie

2010-01-24T17:46:00.001-07:00

I found this recipe here on The Women's Colony blog. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't it have been prettier if I'd taken a picture before I cut into it??

I added a little cooked chicken, and I forgot to buy frozen peas, so they were omitted. I thought it was really good. Indian-y and a little spicy. Homey and comforting. It smelled great while cooking. You could spice it up a little more if you like spicy Indian food (add more curry and red pepper).

After some initial suspicion, it turned out that Jason liked it, too, and he ate two pieces. It probably won't be something that I'll make every month, but I do plan to make it again some time.

Book 3: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

2010-01-23T21:29:00.003-07:00

by Tiffany Baker. The little giant is a woman named Truly, who has some sort of glandular irregularity and grows big, big, big. She and her friends are all a little odd, and they often get pushed around, stepped on, and abused by other, "normal" people. It makes you wish for them to get some kind of violent super revenge on the jerks.

It's a nice, light-ish novel, interesting and well-told. There are some pretty poetic moments in the prose, like this: "'I like the color green,' and then her tongue loosened and gave way to an unbroken wailing pouring from her throat, a noise like a cat bleeding in the rain." How do you like that?? It's describing the actions of a woman in the midst of giving birth.

Try this one: "'A type of cancer. My white blood cells are multiplying too quickly. They're choking out the red ones.' I hadn't realized you could divide blood into opposing colors, but I supposed if anyone could turn something as elemental as his own blood into something that seethed and fought, it would be [him]."

I will definitely be interested in reading anything else Baker writes.

Book 2: Half Broke Horses

2010-01-13T18:07:00.003-07:00

Now THIS is a memoir! Okay, it's not even really a memoir, but it's still a hell of a lot better memoir than Cleaving.

Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, tells her grandmother's story in Half Broke Horses. Because Walls could not absolutely verify all the facts, and because she wanted to tell the story in the first person, she calls it a novel rather than a memoir or biography.

Lily Casey Smith grew up as a rancher, teacher, and mother (she was Jeannette's mother's mother). In case you read The Glass Castle and wonder about how Jeannette's mother was raised, Lily had many, many regrets about how her daughter turned out and what a wild life she chose to live. Lily always tried to teach practical lessons, but her daughter rebelled and became as impractical a person as possible: a wandering artist with no interest in stability or predictability (like making sure there was always food for the kids to eat).

Just as in The Glass Castle, Walls tells the story in a straightforward manner, with no pity requested, no matter how bad things got. It's a really readable and intriguing story of a tough, resourceful, funny woman.

I can't help but compare it to Cleaving, since I just read that book, and since I still haven't fully digested that one. Walls tells her story in chronological order, without cliffhangers or other cheap tricks to keep readers interested. Julie Powell scrambles back and forth between present day and the past couple of years, and between her butchering apprenticeship and her relationships. She gives a little taste -- a teaser -- of what happened in her love life and then switches back to graphic descriptions of cutting up cows. Julie and Julia was also pretty scattered, chronologically and in terms of subject matter.

I would really like to read something by Powell that is only about ONE theme, without a heavy-handed metaphor woven throughout. Julie, if you're reading this, please write a travelogue in chronological order, with all your sarcasm and humor and self-deprecation, and don't compare traveling to marriage. Julie, you are great at telling stories, but not so great at telling two or three stories at the same time. And the best part about Cleaving was the descriptions of your Fear Factor-like travels. Thanks.

Book 1: Cleaving

2010-01-12T17:49:00.003-07:00

After a year of keeping track of which books I read, I want to keep going. I'm curious about how many books I will read without any number in mind. So, today I want to tell you about Cleaving by Julie Powell.

I already told you that I really like her writing, but I really dislike Julie. I still feel that way now that I'm done with this one. And I can't help thinking, "her parents are reading this book about her S&M dates with her boyfriend, and about her husband having his own girlfriend!" And that's kind of brave and honest, or else it's just a way to write a sensational book to try to stay famous, or else it's just a desperate cry for attention. My feelings toward Julie varied greatly throughout the book. I felt sorry for her, disappointed by her, embarrassed for her, grossed out by her, somewhat sympathetic toward her, and scared for her, but I never felt like I wanted to meet her or hang out with her.

The best part of the book is when she describes traveling to other countries by herself. After she finishes her butchering apprenticeship, she goes to Argentina, the Ukraine, and Tanzania (and Japan, but she doesn't tell us much about it).

Overall, I don't recommend it. It was pretty disappointing.

Books without pressure!

2010-01-10T00:14:00.004-07:00

Well, I'm in the middle of a bunch of books! It's so nice to have no self-imposed pressure to finish them quickly. If I were trying to read 2 a week again, I'd be behind already.

And I know I'm reading a lot of books at one time, but believe me when I say I'm holding myself back from about 20 others that are waiting on the shelf. I've wanted to read 2666 by Bolano since about a year ago, and I have the first two of Steig Larsson's trilogy, and a Paul Auster that I haven't read, and one about Darwin, and one about The Great Wall of China, and a bunch more.

My Mom and I are both reading The Artist's Way, which has activities aimed at increasing creativity. The first task is that every morning, you write 3 pages in longhand in a journal. Just stream-of-consciousness stuff that no one will ever see. It helps to get the crap out so you can move on with your day without being bogged down. I'm still struggling to remember to do it in the morning, but I'm doing it every day and I think it is really useful. So far, so good.

Living Your Yoga has suggested practices, too, but so far I'm only reading. And sometimes thinking, "yes, I should do that." There are three main parts, with seven chapters in each part. The parts are:
Awakening Awareness: Yoga within Yourself;
Widening the Circle: Yoga and Relationships; and
Embracing All Life: Yoga in the World

The chapters are entitled things like Courage, Control, Patience, and Nonviolence. It's pretty good for reading a little bit each day and thinking about how to be a better person all the time. It's not woo-woo or New Agey.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is really, really good. It's over 700 pages of (sometimes) amazing short stories. I'm going to try to make it last a long time rather than gulping it all down quickly, because it's so good.

The Origins and Development of the English Language was a textbook in one of my college classes and now I want to read it again. I'm sure I'll skim some parts of it, but I feel really interested in the history of English right now, and I've forgotten a lot of it. I have a habit of re-reading books years later. That's why it is tough for me to get rid of books -- some day I will probably wish that I could read them again and I'll have to BUY them again. But this one, I got used for only a couple bucks. My copy is from 1993, and there are newer editions, but they cost a lot more.

Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1960s sci-fi novel (according to its own cover, "The most famous science fiction novel ever written"). I'll tell you if I think it deserves that honor when I'm done with it. It's sort of cheesy, but for the genre, not that bad.

The plot: astronauts went to Mars and had a baby and then they died. The baby was raised by Martians. When the baby is 25 years old, more Earth astronauts land on Mars and convince him to go to Earth with them. He's totally Martian in terms of culture, thought process, concepts, language, and traditions. Everyone wants a piece of him.

Cleaving is pretty awful. It's by the woman who wrote Julie and Julia, and in this memoir, she tells us all about becoming a butcher AND about cheating on her husband for two years. You'd think the graphic details of chopping up animals would be the gross part, but it isn't. Yet I must read the whole thing. I really like her writing style, but I really dislike HER.

.

My New Project

2010-01-06T11:11:00.002-07:00

I've been working on a new (slightly terrifying) project: publishing a novel online. I'm writing it as I go, and I'm not 100% certain how the story ends, so I will be finding out along with you.

Here is my description:

Neighborhood Confessions is a novel that is told in three parts, on three different blogs. To get the whole story, read the entries of all three bloggers:

The Meanie is a woman who uses Mean Blog as a place to anonymously and harmlessly complain about her family, friends, and neighbors (who include The Snoop and The Reader).

The Snoop posts all the neighborhood gossip on Neighborhood Watch. She is an unrepentant agent provacateur, busybody, and spy -- even recruiting other neighbors to take part in her hobby. With too much time on her hands and an excess of imagination, she is disliked by all who enjoy a little privacy.

The Reader periodically "borrows" a sister's diary and posts the entries on My Sister's Diary without permission. The Reader sometimes adds a little commentary to the diary entries, filling in a few details for us about the neighborhood.

It is a tale of secrets, accidents, and hastily made bad decisions. I hope you will have as much fun reading it as I am having writing it!

There are two entries up so far, on Mean Blog and My Sister's Diary . I'll attempt to have an entry up almost every day (though probably just on one blog per day). I think it will last for about three months. I haven't seen this style of story-telling yet, and I hope it will be a lot of fun to write and to read.

The return of nice handwriting

2010-01-02T13:15:00.003-07:00

Not in general -- this is not a diatribe about how kids these days don't learn to write in cursive. It's only about my own handwriting.

During law school, I lost my handwriting. Instead of my attractive, legible writing, I scrawled and scribbled and sometimes I couldn't even read it myself. You see, we were crowded together like nobody's business and I couldn't get into my correct writing posture. I prefer to put my whole forearm on the desk and turn kind of sideways to write nicely.

No, I'm not lefthanded. I just like to rest my arm on the desk so that my hand can move more freely and possibly boisterously. I need to write flamboyantly!

Plus, I was writing so fast to try not to miss anything, and then I was writing for so LONG -- hours and hours sometimes, and my hand would cramp up and the only thing that could move was my shoulder joint as I desperately clutched my pen Bob Dole-style.

And now I notice that my old handwriting, which I prefer, has made a reappearance, just 2 years and 8 months since graduating. All right!

But, does it have any significance? Does it mean that the Old Me is back??? Who was she and what's she done with the Other Me?

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Finished the Marshmallows

2010-01-02T13:06:00.001-07:00

After they sat for a while, I tried to peel off the plastic wrap, which was nearly impossible. This was because I was being too nice to the lump of hoof+sugar. Just TEAR it off! Let them get stretched and torn and misshapen. They will bounce right back.

Cut them into hunks, or whatever shape you can manage. Marshmallows are not particularly well-behaved.

Coat them in powdered sugar ASAP to quell the stickiness. You may even want to coat your fingers in powdered sugar before trying to cut them. It helps.

Then I tried to dip them into melted chocolate to make pretty half-chocolate, half-white rectangular solids. But alas! The powdered sugar made them less dippable. The chocolate just dripped right back off.

So, if you want to dip in chocolate, maybe you should only coat ONE END in powdered sugar and then dip the other end in chocolate. I really needed ten more minutes to play with them but we had to go so they just got clumps of chocolate plopped on top. It worked, but as you can see, they looked ridiculous!

Michele! The bad hoofy smell totally goes away as you furiously mix the gelatin and sugar together. First the gelatin smells like barn animals, then it smells like Jell-O, and then it smells like marshmallows.

They tasted good, and people ate some of them. They got powdered sugar everywhere, which caused a small amount of shouting and recriminations.

And that's the story of the homemade marshmallows.

Makin' Marshmallows

2009-12-31T15:44:00.002-07:00

Now that my self-imposed reading prison sentence is complete, I can take more time to make weird things, like homemade marshmallows to take to a New Year's Eve party. (I pronounce that word "marsh MELLows" not "marsh Mal-os". Please read along with my pronunciation to get the full effect of being here.)

Here's the Martha Stewart recipe that I'm following.

First, put some water and gelatin in a mixing bowl and let it collude to form a rubbery disk.

Meanwhile, boil up a bunch of sugar on the stove. I didn't take any photos of either of those steps. Just use your imagination!

Then, mix the rubber disk and the boiling sugar syrup together, and it creates a disgusting smell! You might shout, "Ew! Hot gelatin smells like the horse hooves it's made out of!" and make your loved one go, "WHAT? GELATIN IS MADE OF WHAT???" Then get your loved one to come over and smell it so you can both be grossed out together. Good thing you're taking them to a party, since neither of you finds marshmallows very appetizing now!

Mix it more and more furiously! It will eventually smell like marshmallows.

The mixer has to mix and mix until the motor wears out -- that's how you know they're done. In the meantime, think back to the first time you ever heard of anyone making their own marshmallows. For me, the woman was a rather controlling, possibly obsessive, and almost-always bossy person. And she may or may not have turned out to be kind of batshit, but that doesn't have to ruin marshmallows for the rest of us. SHE dipped them in melted chocolate (Martha doesn't even mention that idea but just shows a picture of a giant marshmallow floating on a cup of hot cocoa -- pretty pedestrian, Martha!)

Finally, when the stuff looks like taffy and your mixer is all clogged up, try to move the hoof+sugar from the mixing bowl and into a pan that has been previously both sprayed with cooking spray and lined with plastic wrap. Still, you will wind up sticky.

Smash the stuff down with a double-whammy top layer of plastic wrap sprayed with non-stick spray! Flatten it out; beat it into submission. Now let it sit calmly and think about what it did for two hours. Then you can cut it into pieces and cover them in chocolate, or put them in your hot chocolate, or make s'mores, or whatever.

Now, riddle me this, MARTHA! How the hell do I get the oh-so-sticky marshmallow stuff out of the mixing bowl???

...Oh, simply soaking it in water will eventually drain the sticky of all its power?
Okay, thanks.

Book 104: The Pearl

2009-12-31T14:07:00.003-07:00

Ah, the final book, finished at about 1:00 PM on 12/31/09, is John Steinbeck's The Pearl. What a great way to end the year. Steinbeck doesn't waste a word, and even though he tells a lot (rather than showing), he does it in a way that is mostly forgivable, and he intertwines the telling and the showing together, so it doesn't seem as much like cheating.

In this novel, a villager finds an enormous, perfect pearl in the Gulf and it changes everyone's lives. "Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy."

Read these two sentences, and see if the idea seems true: "For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have."

Well, this pearl is TOO big, and the pearl buyers try to cheat Kino. None of the villagers know how to bargain or how to go to the city to get a fair deal. But Kino will not be cheated. Someone comes in the night to try to steal the pearl. Kino's wife begs him to destroy it, to cleanse the family of its evil. But Kino has seen a future in which his son will go to school and learn to read and then they will all know the things that the Europeans know. They will know what is true.

Oh, that pearl seems to promise safety and security and never being hungry, and that is very difficult to resist.

Read this: "And the sun beat down on the streets of the city and even tiny stones threw shadows on the ground." What would you give to be able to write a sentence like that?

Here is another great tidbit from this novel: "He had said, 'I am a man,' and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god." True dat, right sisters?

The thing that makes this book really great, aside from the talented and skillful writing, is that it rings completely true. Imagine if you won the lottery, and not just enough to pay off the bills, but some insanely huge amount, like $500 million. Some amount that would absolutely destroy your current life and send you hurtling into some other existence. Everyone knows you have the money, and they all want some of it -- and not a little bit. Does a little part of you hate them for their greed? Do you question everyone's motives in hanging around you? Do you have to shut yourself away from the world for security and safety? It's easy to imagine the bad side of sudden immense wealth. Steinbeck wrote something like, when we step into the sunlight, our shadow side is revealed as well. Something like The Pearl could bring out the worst in each of us.

Woo Hoo Hoo!! I completed my challenge of reading 104 books in 2009!! I'm pretty relieved to be done.

But... I have made a new challenge for myself for 2010. I hope it will begin some time tomorrow, and I think it will be a lot of fun, even though I'm just a little terrified.

Happy New Year's Eve! I hope you have fun and get home safely and get ready to start your resolutions tomorrow.

Book 103: Notorious Victoria

2009-12-31T13:33:00.003-07:00

Whew! I finished this one at about 1AM. It's a very readable biography of Victoria Claflin Woodhull Blood Martin, the first woman to run for President of the United States of America. That was in 1872, long before women had the right to vote (which came in 1920, if you've forgotten).

Often referred to as "The Woodhull" by the press, Victoria was scandalous and outrageous! She was ahead of her time (and still might be today in some areas). She divorced two husbands, but the first one lived with her and the second husband for some time. She was as involved in the Women's Movement as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, but she pissed them off so much that they completely wrote her out of their 900-page history!

She was nominated for the office of President on the Equal Rights Party ticket, with the famous Frederick Douglass nominated as Vice Presidential candidate. But, many Republicans were aghast at the thought of the re-election of the corrupt Ulysses S. Grant, and so they banded together to support Horace Greeley, leaving Victoria with little support. Besides that, she was not listed on the ballot due to being a woman AND being only 34 years old (one year shy of being legally able to hold the office). Grant won anyway.

She believed that women and men were equal and that women should have careers and be able to vote and run for public office. She and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, ran a brokerage house, published a newspaper, opened a school for teaching micro-agriculture to women, and was very involved in leading Spiritualist, Labor, and Women's groups.

Victoria was the first woman to address a committee of the U.S. Congress (arguing for women's suffrage). She was much admired by our well-known feminists at that time (Anthony, Stanton, etc.)

The Woodhull gave lectures all over the Eastern U.S. and in England about various topics, including women's suffrage, Spiritualism (by which I mean talking to ghosts), Unions, 8-hour workdays, the poor rising up to take back their wealth from the rich (she was aligned with communists for a while), and Free Love.

The feminists of the day possibly could have continued to support and appreciate The Woodhull if she had only:

* stuck to the topic of women's suffrage rather than getting involved in other areas of politics (labor, restructuring the government, etc.)

* kept quiet about her ability to speak to the dead, which was embarrassing

* kept quiet about Free Love. Victoria did not believe that a woman should be forced for survival to marry any man and have to submit to his unwanted sexual attentions. Women should marry for love and have sex because they want to -- she was truly a radical in the 1800s! Victoria had a love affair with Theodore Tilton during one of her marriages. Tilton revealed to her that his wife was sleeping with the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (famous feminist).

When Victoria told the world that the Reverend was a Free Lover (to support her supposition that men are allowed to remain respectable while having sex outside of marriage, and women should be as well), all hell broke loose. Rev. Beecher never admitted to it publicly (though he did privately). Harriet Beecher Stowe was instrumental in kicking Victoria out of the feminist club as revenge.

PLUS, The Woodhull and her sister were imprisoned while being tried for libel after printing the story in their newspaper. But while imprisoned, "the other inmates agreed to refrain from smoking while the ladies were in residence." So at least there was that.

The Woodhull's story is very entertaining and amazing. How did this woman totally disappear from history? I have a minor in Women's Studies and I never heard of her. Re-write the books, Women's Historians! Don't let Harriet Beecher Stowe continue getting revenge forever.

Mary Gabriel's writing is almost conversational and easy, while always objective. Notorious Victoria is a great read.

Fun With Spelling

2009-12-28T23:11:00.004-07:00

A local radio station keeps advertising an upcoming concert at a venue near Denver. The venue has been renamed, and the DJ said, "at the Odium."

I was all, "WHA??" Why would you name an event center "The Odium"??? That means something horrible, and hated, and dreaded! That doesn't make any sense at all. If it were some kind of heavy metal club or a Goth parlor or something, it would make sense. But this place has concerts and horse shows and UFC MMA events.

*** just a quick aside to mention an episode of The Simpsons that I saw last night, in which Marge objects to MMA fighting and says, "Just because this isn't my taste, I think no one should be able to enjoy it." And then she and some other meddlers picket outside the arena and my favorite picket sign said, "UNMIX the Martial Arts!" ***

Anyway, I confirmed my definition, and sure enough, "Odium" comes from Latin and refers to something that is hated, detested, and makes people angry.

Then I thought: I'd better just double-check.

So I looked up the word Odium AND the city name, and guess what. It's spelled ODEUM, which comes from Greek and means a theater or concert hall.

Now THAT makes sense.

.

Book 102: Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

2009-12-28T22:45:00.003-07:00

This book by Annie Dillard took me a long time to read. It's not because I didn't enjoy it, but just because it's a book best savored. I'm so out of the habit of quickly reading and digesting serious material that I have to read slowly and break it up into smaller installments. I can still read easy fiction at hyper-speed, just not serious books.

I first read this book about 10 years ago, and I liked it then, and I liked it this year. Dillard lived for a year in Virginia, near Tinker Creek. She read and walked around and looked at nature and thought. Doesn't that sound great? It was the '70s, so she surely wasn't as addicted to technology as many of us are these days -- it wouldn't have felt quite so foreign to live more in nature.

Dillard tells little stories about nature and Nature and science and God and horrors and beauty. Her prose is just right to reflect a young woman who is extremely excited about life and science and nature. This book won the Pulitzer Prize.

Some of my favorite parts:

* She tells of a man who measured the pressure exerted by a growing squash. It was 5 thousand pounds per square inch! It made me wonder if the pressure of a growing baby is the same, but of course we could never hook a baby up to a machine to measure the pressure exerted by its growing body. Dillard makes you think of weird experiments. You won't be able to help it.

* She writes of human beings, "Our excessive emotions are so patently painful and harmful to us as a species that I can hardly believe that they evolved." If we were all lobotomized, we could all be happy.

* Here's a perfect line, "I felt a rush of such pure energy I thought I would not need to breathe for days."

* On navel gazing: "I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves."

* I love her description of a muskrat-watching adventure, in which she is lying on a bridge close to the water, trying not to move when the animal can see her, but rolling back and forth to watch him as he swims back and forth under the bridge. "All this time I was not only doing an elaborate about-face every time his eyes disappeared under the bridge, but I was also smoking a cigarette." Ah, the 1970's when cigarettes and nature could be combined without irony!

I love Annie Dillard and highly recommend her books.

Book 101: Under The Dome

2009-12-25T19:45:00.004-07:00

I couldn't resist this huge tome from Stephen King, even though I need to read quickly to finish my challenge! It's 1072 pages long, but it went fast anyway.

The premise is that a little town in the Northeastern U.S. is one day trapped, inexplicably, under an invisible dome. No one can get in or out. Water and gases can slowly trickle through, but heat and pollution are building up after only a couple of days. The military can't breach it and no one knows what to do.

There's a bit more of a supernatural element to it, but I won't ruin the surprise for you. Mostly, King sticks to what he's great at: developing characters who seem real and pitting them against each other.

There is a really, really bad guy who is GLAD for the Dome because he would love to take over as dictator. There are other bad guys and stupid guys who help the Bad Man and enjoy the hateful, childish tormenting of the good guys.

There are the good guys and the medium-good people who try to help each other and stop the bad guys, and some just aren't trying to hurt anyone.

King builds the plot up until the reader wishes to go to that town and kill the bad guys herself. But instead, all she can do is keep reading and trust that an appropriate fate awaits the baddies.

It is fun, imaginative, and entertaining. King's still got it.

Truffles: First Attempt

2009-12-24T19:14:00.001-07:00

One day, earlier this month, I suddenly became VERY INTERESTED in making chocolate truffles. I'm sure that reading the sequel to Chocolat played a role in this obsession. I found a few recipes, including this one for Honey Vanilla Chocolate Truffles from Martha Stewart. I rounded up all the chocolate and what-not that I needed, and set to work.

I envisioned beautiful chocolates that I could package and give as gifts, wowing people left and right!

Well, the Honey Vanilla Chocolate Truffles turned out DELICIOUS! But I thought they were too ugly to share, even when sprinkled with colored sugar. Even the one that was rolled in chopped slivered almonds. With practice, and maybe with something called Luster Dust (which I hear was invented as an edible body paint-type thing, but then got co-opted by bakers), perhaps I can make attractive truffles next year.

The OTHER batch I made was just regular chocolate truffles, except that I added some peanut butter to the mixture. Well, I did it WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! My ganache never hardened. It spent the night in the freezer and was still too soft to roll into balls.

But it tasted really, really good. So, I did what I had to do. I made some yellow cupcakes and used the peanut butter ganache as icing and it was so, so good!

They may look ugly, but my taste buds did not mind at all.

Lessons learned:

*The first time I make something, I should follow a recipe instead of winging it.

*But sometimes winging it leads to a great cupcake icing or other surprise treat.

*And if you make ugly candy and are forced to eat it instead of giving it away, YOU GET TO EAT A BUNCH OF CANDY! And cupcakes!

A Few Simple Ornaments

2009-12-24T18:55:00.001-07:00

These are really simple to make: just cut out two layers of felt for the main shape. Sew any decorations onto one layer with matching embroidery floss (making all knots on the back), and then sew the two layers together (all knots will be in the middle).

You can sew the ribbon on with embroidery floss as you sew the two layers together, or use sewing thread to attach the ribbon once the ornament is done. I think the thinner ribbon looks better (as opposed to the Gingerbread Man's thicker ribbon).

Gingerbread Man and Snowman

Back sides

Crooked Star (you may want to make a perfect template rather than cutting yours out freehand). I like crooked, but not everyone does!

Stocking: I sewed green pieces on top of a red sock shape.

Candy Cane: I sewed white stripes on top of a red cane shape.

Tree: is it weird to put a tree ornament on a tree? Should I have made tiny tree ornaments to decorate the tree ornament? And so on! When would it ever end?

Book 100: Girl With A Pearl Earring

2009-12-20T15:13:00.003-07:00

This novel by Tracy Chevalier is set in Delft, The Netherlands, in the 1660s. You may have seen the movie based on this book, which stars Scarlett Johansson.

The plot is that a young woman's family hits hard times and she must go to work as a maid in Vermeer's house. She struggles with doing as Vermeer asks without offending his wife. She must avoid a handsy patron and deal with her impatient future husband. And her worst enemy may be a 7-year old girl who likes to cause trouble.

Chevalier's writing is excellent. She develops characters well and times the plot nicely. It is fun to read about Delft in the 1660s. It brings back memories of touring Amsterdam several years ago. I never saw Delft, but I think there are many similarities between the cities. I was able to go on a tour of Rembrandt's house, which is being restored with historical accuracy. He also painted portraits in the 1600s, but in Amsterdam. Chevalier's descriptions of Vermeer's house meld with my memories of Rembrandt's house to create a very full, vivid experience. I love it when it all comes together!

Four books to go! I couldn't resist starting Under the Dome, which has over 1,070 pages! The other three are already started, as well: Steinbeck's The Pearl, Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Notorious Victoria (author's name temporarily forgotten).

Goodbye, Junk!

2009-12-17T15:23:00.001-07:00

We sorted and re-sorted and debated and hemmed and hawed, and finally we made a finished DONATE PILE. Then it sat in the garage for a couple months until I finally called a local thrift store that does pick-ups. Then we waited two weeks for the big day to arrive.

We got up at the crack of dawn to put it all outside and tape signs on the items and boxes. The picker-uppers could arrive at any time between 7:30AM and 5:00PM. How convenient!

At the last minute, an old bicycle was begrudgingly added to the pile after much consternation. Possibly it could have been altered and made into some sort of single-speed cruiser. But it would still be too small and it would still be a third bike for only two people. BUT again, it was much beloved and had been expensive when purchased 15 years ago. HOWEVER, it would probably never be ridden again, and it's not that easy to store bicycles. ON THE OTHER HAND, he loved it.

Well, I was able to watch the pick-up through the window when the doods showed up at about 10:00AM. They parked their giant truck in the parking lot behind our place, rather than pulling into the alley. So they had to take everything over a curb, and down a small hill to get it to the truck. They insisted on carrying two items at a time, which was unfortunate.

For one thing, DOOD #1 totally dropped the box that contained a perfect, complete coffee service set. All the pieces were wrapped in newspaper, but that couldn't protect them from a harsh fall, a tumble down the hill, and then being thrown back into the box. I had never used the set, but had I known that DOOD #1 would break 1/4 of the pieces on the way to the truck, I probably would have held on to it and pretended that some day I would have people over and serve them coffee by pouring the coffee from the brewing pot into the serving pot, and pouring milk from the plastic jug into the little milk pitcher, and filling the sugar bowl from the sugar bag that's inside a ziploc bag. AND serving little cups of coffee upon matching saucers. Yeah, right.

Poor DOOD #1 was trying to carry that coffee service box along with a dismantled CD rack, which is very tricky to move around and really requires 2 - 6 hands.

Next, DOOD #1 grabbed a heavy box full of books AND the microwave oven at the same time. I have to admit that I was and still am slightly aghast that he carried the microwave BY THE CORD! Oh my God! You never, ever, EVER carry an appliance by the cord! That was a perfectly good microwave, and CLEAN! And it had a glass plate in the bottom, on which to sit your food item so that it could rotate around and heat evenly. That glass plate is probably broken now, but I guess that doesn't matter if the electric cord was ripped out of the thing.

Finally, DOOD #2 carried some over-the-door shoe racks and the beloved bicycle at the same time, but tripping over the curb on his way down the hill must have pissed him off, and he literally threw the bike into the truck, right on top of all our breakable donatables. Poor bikey.

So, I know that it was all stuff that we didn't want (excepting maybe the bike, kinda sorta), and it doesn't matter what happens to it as long as it's gone. But part of being able to let go of it was the belief that someone would get some use out of it, and that it could maybe help some people. If I ever try to purge again, I will have to forget about this experience. Half the stuff you donate just gets ruined by the employees! Imagine what happens at the Great Sorting Warehouse!

I guess the other reason I was so surprised was that the lady on the phone who set up the pick-up for me GRILLED me about the condition of the donation items. Are they clean? Does everything work? Would you give them to someone you know?

She's probably wondering why half the stuff they get is broken and the other half needs to be re-wired. Why do all the bikes look like they got thrown into a truck? At least the over-the-door shoe racks seemed to be intact -- some thrift store customer out there must have some shoes that need organizing.

TOO high

2009-12-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here's an SUV we saw in a parking lot and I couldn't resist embarrassing Jason by posing next to it. I'm almost 6 feet tall, and would have some trouble getting into it -- how do the owners climb in?

I tried to stall and hang around to see the giant rednecks who drive it, but alas, we never spotted them.

And seriously, doesn't that kind of alteration make an SUV 97% likely to tip over when going around the gentlest curve? What is the point of it?

New Dress

2009-12-14T12:02:00.002-07:00

I finished sewing this dress the other day.

I'm not that experienced with making sleeves, so I'm thrilled with how they turned out.

The pattern is McCall's M5576. The fabric is Echino by Etsuko Furuya Fall 2009 Ornament Turquoise. It's a linen and cotton blend, and I love it, but I think this dress would have been better with a little stretch. It turns out that I am not very good at being ladylike. Wearing this dress, I am very aware of how often I make big movements: reaching, stretching, picking up heavy things, running up and down stairs, etc... In this dress, I have to be a little more calm or I will rip the seams apart, Hulk-style.

If anyone knows where I can get some really cute cotton fabrics with a little stretch, please let me know! The cutest fabric that I find always seems to be non-stretch.

Book 99: Poppy Done to Death

2009-12-12T12:55:00.002-07:00

This is my last Charlaine Harris book -- until she writes some more. In this one, Aurora's step-sister-in-law is murdered, and guess who finds the body! It's Aurora, like in every book!

Well, sister Poppy has been having affairs with everyone, and our heroine is pretty disgusted. The disgust and the multiple suspects make it even trickier to figure out who killed Poppy.

Additionally, Aurora has a little half-brother. They share the same cheating father. Little brother is now a teenager and he comes for a visit, complicating and livening up Aurora's Thanksgiving plans/murder solving.

It's the same kind of deal you expect from Charlaine Harris (just seeing her name makes me want to speak in an outrageous parody of a Southern accent: Sharrr-LAYYYNE!). The characters are much more important and interesting than the mysteries. The characters are pretty well-drawn, and the mysteries are not. I have just discovered that this type of novel is called a "cozy." They usually take place in small towns, and the mysteries are solved by female amateur sleuths. There's not much graphic description of blood, violence, or sex. There's little to no cursing (or as I call it, cussin'). It's a whole genre that I never knew existed.

Thanks to this quick read, I am officially now CAUGHT UP and only have to read 5 more books by the end of the year. I'm horribly tempted by a couple of 1,000-pagers that are weighing down my shelves, but I'll try to wait until after Book 104.

Books 97 & 98: A Fool And His Honey & Last Scene Alive

2009-12-10T23:33:00.003-07:00

Oh, Charlaine Harris, your Aurora Teagarden novels continue to move me closer to my reading goal!

In A Fool and His Honey, Aurora has to watch over an abandoned baby, try to figure out the parentage of the baby, travel to the North (Ohio), see how useless a father her husband would be, and solve a tacked-on second mystery. As usual, it's fun to read about the characters. The secondary mystery was quite unfulfilling and very much seemed like an afterthought.

In Last Scene Alive, Aurora is a widow. She's also dealing with the film crew that's making a movie of her own experience of almost being murdered! But guess what, the script was written by her ex-flame, Robin Crusoe, who helped her solve her very first mystery. Someone dies, and someone has a secret past, and Aurora meddles in it all while being pursued romantically by multiple men (typical set-up from Harris).

I liked when Aurora mentioned that with her glasses on, she could hear better when she talked on the phone. She also talks later about being without her glasses, saying, "I am never at my most alert when the whole world is a blur." Now, I'm not nearly as blind as she is supposed to be, but it is true that I feel pretty out of sorts without my glasses or contacts. The last time I went to the eye doctor, she did some looking in my eyes and then didn't give me my glasses back. I honestly had a little bit of trouble talking to her without my corrected vision. I felt very vulnerable and a little bit stupid. So, kudos to Charlaine for capturing such a true detail. She does that kind of thing a lot, actually.

I only have one more Harris novel to finish, and I'll be caught up! Only 5 more books needed after that to reach my goal of 104. I'm pretty sure I'll make it. I can't wait to read LONG books again next year, or maybe magazines! Or watch movies! But I will miss having the excuse: "I can't do XYZ! I've got to read for my blog!" That has been pretty nice.

Books 94, 95, 96: Three Bedrooms, One Corpse; The Julius House; Dead Over Heels

2009-12-08T11:38:00.003-07:00

These are three more novels in the Aurora Teagarden series by Charlaine Harris. These quick reads are really helping me get caught up on my goal of reading 104 books by the end of the year!

As usual with Harris's work, these are character-driven much more than plot-driven. Aurora is a fun and interesting character. She dresses and styles herself in just as poor taste as does Sookie Stackhouse. She is a tiny little librarian who is often stumbling upon dead bodies. Aurora also loves mystery novels and true crimes, so she enjoys trying to solve all the murders that happen near her.

In these three novels, she looks for a new house to buy, dumps her minister boyfriend for a more exciting man, and finds the Realtor Murderer (I made up that nickname just now, just for you). She gets married, takes ownership of a house with a mysterious past, and discovers some unwelcome secrets about her husband. She finds the corpse of a man she has hated for years, fights with a fellow librarian, sees a stabbing, and is pursued romantically by a few men other than her husband.

Even though death, betrayal, assault, and hatred are major themes in these, they still remain rather light-hearted and are very easy to read. And thank goodness, because I don't think I would reach my mass-reading goal without them!

Book 93: A Bone To Pick

2009-12-05T13:33:00.004-07:00

This is book #2 in the Aurora Teagarden series, by Charlaine Harris of Sookie Stackhouse fame. In this episode, the tiny librarian inherits a house and half a million dollars from a casual friend from her murder club. The Real Murders club, which disbanded in the first novel, was a group of people who loved reading and talking about true crimes.

In this book, Aurora discovers a human skull in her new house and has to figure out who the murderer is AND who the victim was.

As usual in Charlaine's work, the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic, but the characters are fun, and you want to find out what happens to them. In this one, the whole mystery is suddenly solved with no subtlety or finesse. I'll still read the rest of the series, even though I have some complaints about her writing.

Book 92: The Girl With No Shadow

2009-12-04T12:23:00.003-07:00

This is Joanne Harris's sequel to Chocolat.

Vianne and her daughter, Anouk, have been on the run for a few years, changing their names and their background stories, and raising little Rosette, Vianne's second daughter. They have stopped doing magic/witchcraft and are being as normal and boring as possible.

Then they meet their match: a woman who travels around, stealing identities and practicing her own brand of magic/witchcraft, with spells and symbols and charms. She moves into their lives -- too far into their lives.

The writing is lyrical and mystical. Vianne's still making chocolates and the descriptions might lead readers into chocolate binges.

The major theme is Identity. Can you change yours? Can you just become someone else and be happy? Can you deny your true self? Yes, no, and no, of course. If you liked the first book, you'll probably like this one, too. It's a fun, exciting story about magic mixed with modern life's text messages, security cameras, and internet searches.

Book 91: Buster Midnight's Cafe

2009-11-30T20:31:00.003-07:00

This is another novel by Sandra Dallas, who wrote The Persian Pickle Club. This one takes place in Butte, Montana, in the 30s and 40s.

Our narrator tells the true story of her famous friend who went from being a poor little girl to a prostitute to a Hollywood starlet. Along the way, she tells about another friend who became a famous boxer. She also tells about her own life and that of her best friend.

It's good, unpretentious storytelling, fun, and also a tear-jerker. It's fun to read about life in that era.

--

Oh My God! NaBloPoMo is over! I did it. I posted every day this month. Thanks for reading along.

Now to finish my reading challenge -- only 13 books to finish in one month.

Today I did one of my most-dreaded things: calling up customer service numbers to take care of stuff. And I did it THREE times. I had to get my online banking unlocked, set up a day to get our junk pile picked up by the thrift store, and call Nautilus about a faulty handle on my Bowflex Selectech dumbell. All three calls went very smoothly and I got great service. I was on the phone for over an hour, but it all seems to be taken care of. Phew!

Home Again!

2009-11-29T20:41:00.002-07:00

After a trip, it's always so nice to settle back into home, and start the laundry and put away all the bags and chargers and road snacks. And have a full wardrobe to choose from, as opposed to just what I thought to pack (do you ever get tired of wearing the same shoes for several days in a row?). And have a much-needed pedicure while watching "Dexter".

At our house, we have hard water, and it has a distinctive smell. The smell was really strong when we first moved in, but it had subsided... until we left for several days! Now it smells like minerals in here again. I guess that's now the smell of home. Weird.

I'm excited to:
sleep in my own bed
sleep for a long time tonight
look for a fun new job
do more sewing
play with the cat
lift some weights

And, tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I am on track for successfully posting every day in November! I can do it!

Fleece Dolly

2009-11-28T21:23:00.001-07:00

She liked it okay.

She didn't say anything about it being wiggledy-piggledy.

Recent Events

2009-11-27T16:46:00.001-07:00

We got to watch the Avalanche play hockey while we sat in a fancy box.

There were free eats and drinks.

We visited a little girl with a balloon on her foot.

And saw some dancing.

Little Owl

2009-11-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Mom made an owl using my pattern. Pretty cute!

Book 90: The Year of the Flood

2009-11-25T23:17:00.003-07:00

This is Margaret Atwood's sequel to Oryx and Crake. It takes place concurrently with Oryx and Crake, and is told from the points of view of two women. Both women were one-time reluctant members of a religious cult that believed in vegetarianism and protecting animals from extinction (how extreme!). They also dress very modestly and don't believe in using cell phones and other technology (how horrible!).

Both women survive a major man-made plague and then deal with the aftermath. All lone survivors believe they could be the last people on earth. Is there a reason to live, then? If so, what is it?

Again, we wonder about whether or not humanity deserves to survive, and if we can and should be forgiven for our destructive behavior and greed. Again, we consider love and friendship and loyalty.

One of my favorite moments is when a cultist prays for strength from the spirits of the Wolf, the Leopard, and the bio-engineered Liobam, a Lion-Lamb cross meant to somehow appease contrary religious groups. The cultists don't approve of creating weird combo-animals. Still, the Liobam looks harmless, but is quite an effective hunter, so her choice is logical, as she plans to hunt.

I really enjoyed returning to this world, but there were maybe a few too many coincidences. Still, I was impressed at how she wove this story together with Oryx and Crake. She just could have let a few more characters die in the plague.

views

2009-11-24T22:32:00.001-07:00

Power Plant steam

Mountain with window reflections

Cloud shaped like a briefcase

This one looked like a zipper when we were driving around, but in the photo it doesn't.

Book 89: Oryx and Crake

2009-11-23T23:03:00.004-07:00

This is a science fiction novel/cautionary tale by Margaret Atwood, published in 2003. Atwood just released the sequel, The Year of the Flood, which I'm reading now. I really enjoy Atwood almost all of the time. She often has a sci-fi component to her writing, but it's tempered with a heavy literary bent.

Oryx and Crake is about the last man on earth, and how he got to that point (or is it?)

It's about science-for-profit gone awry, and some of the horrors that can be created, such as chicken knob-thingies: giant chicken breasts growing without heads or brains; just throats down which nutrients may be poured. And gene-splicing to create giant hogs that grow human body parts for transplanting.

Or it's about the convenience and modernity offered by super technology: "a gym suit that cleaned itself overnight due to sweat-eating bacteria, a shirt that displayed email on its sleeve while giving him a little nudge every time he had a message, shoes that changed colour to match his outfits, a talking toaster."

And it's about there being such a huge separation between the classes that our protagonist, Jimmy, who lives in a guarded, gated Compound looks forward to escaping to the dirty "pleeblands" just for a bit of freedom. Atwood describes him riding on a train through the world of the middle class who have nothing to do with the big science corporations: "He glimpsed a couple of trailer parks, and wondered what it was like to live in one of them: just thinking about it made him slightly dizzy, as he imagined a desert might, or the sea. Everything in the pleeblands seemed so boundless, so porous, so penetrable, so wide-open. So subject to change."

And it's about love and obsession and friendship and loyalty.

The setting seems to be the U.S., but slightly in the future. It's an entertaining, imaginative read, and the world Atwood creates is not too much of a stretch from our current reality.

Day 22

2009-11-22T21:56:00.003-07:00

It's Day 22 of NaBloPoMo, and I haven't missed one yet! Eight more to go.

I'm 5 books behind on my reading challenge, and I only have 6 weeks left, so I'd better hurry and get caught up. 16 books to go.

I'm thinking of reading and/or finishing these:

*Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
*and its sequel, The Year of the Flood

*Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

*Buster Midnight's Cafe (by the author of The Persian Pickle Club)

*Notorious Victoria (about the first woman to run for U.S. President, plus an outrageous feminist otherwise)

And maybe some old favorites by Vonnegut, Paul Auster, and Jim Thompson.

In 2010, I am excited to read 2666 by Roberto Bolano, a LONG book that I couldn't spare time for this year. I also want to re-start Don Quixote and finish it this time.

I'm feeling more and more interested in reading history books, but I want them to be entertaining, not dry. I'd like to read a great history of the building of the Great Wall of China. If you know of one, tell me.

Dr. Seuss house?

2009-11-21T21:32:00.001-07:00

This camping cabin in Carlsbad, with its weird, surreal tree (actually some kind of succulent), made me think of nothing but cartoons.

2nd Dolly

2009-11-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

I truly thought this dolly would be perfect. I cut and sewed SO carefully! But, she turned out a little weeble-wobbly like the first attempt.

I still think she's cute, and she and her dress are made of fleece, so she's super cuddly.

She's for a little girl and I think the girl is little enough that she won't care about the non-perfection of the dolly.

Are you familiar with the Japanese term "wabi-sabi"? It is an aesthetic based on the beauty that is found in imperfection. Do you think children can have a wabi-sabi view of dolls? I hope so!

Book 88: The Serpent's Tale

2009-11-19T22:44:00.003-07:00

The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin is a work of historical fiction. Judging by the very defensive post-script by the author, apparently some of her historical assertions are debatable. I just read it as fiction, so I didn't care.

Here's what it is. It's the second book about The Mistress of the Art of Death, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar. She just goes by "Adelia." It's the 1150s, and Adelia was born into circumstances which allowed her to be raised without much religious influence and with all available education. She is known for solving murders by performing autopsies, but she has to pretend that her male friend is the doctor and she is his translator.

King Henry insists that she help solve the mystery of his girlfriend, Rosamund. Others want her to prove that King Henry's wife didn't kill his girlfriend so that the country won't have to endure another civil war. The political stuff is actually pretty much just background when you're reading; it's more about Adelia.

Adelia is a fun character. She's very self-interested, and must be forced to help others. She is extremely frustrated that the state of society forces her to hide her intelligence. Also, Adelia is often involved with hyper-religious folks who object to autopsies (and sometimes object to all scientific inquiry), hindering her murder-solving.

It's a pretty good novel, with interesting characters and settings. If you're an English history buff, you might dislike some arguable inaccuracies, but if you just read it as a story, it's very enjoyable.

Werewolf!

2009-11-18T13:11:00.002-07:00

This morning I opened a set of blinds in my office and got my first peek into the neighbor's bedroom. This is what startled me:

It's that Taylor guy from the Twilight movies! The neighbor is a Twilight fan.

Here's the weird part: I've only ever seen a grown woman and a little boy come and go from that house. Which one loves the werewolf?

Book 87: The Persian Pickle Club

2009-11-17T10:32:00.003-07:00

The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas. I've had this on my shelf since I first read it in 1998, but I didn't remember anything about it. It's somehow kind of lighthearted, even though it takes place in the dust bowl of the Great Depression, and there is a murder, and another death.

A bunch of women in a small town in Kansas belong to a quilting club ("persian pickle" means "paisley" -- they have a story about some paisley fabric). A new woman moves to town, joins the club, and begins working on solving a town mystery.

It's very readable, with an entertaining narrator.

Book 86: JFK and the Unspeakable

2009-11-16T22:05:00.002-07:00

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters by James W. Douglass

I was watching Bill Maher’s show last spring or summer, and Oliver Stone was on, and he brought this book with him, confusing Bill and all the rest of us. Bill asked if Oliver had written the book, but no. He just recommends it. You remember, Oliver Stone made a movie about JFK’s assassination – a movie in which the CIA orchestrated the killing, framing Lee Harvey Oswald. This book is about the same conspiracy theory.

Douglass cites tons of sources: The Warren Report, interviews with witnesses, letters between Kennedy and Kruschev, and interviews with liaisons between Kennedy and Castro. It’s pretty easy to believe that this version of the story, or something like it, is the truth about how Kennedy died. Of course, I have no idea what actually happened. I wasn’t born yet, and I hadn’t read much of anything about it or thought much about it before picking up this book. Other theories may be equally convincing.

It’s very easy to believe that the CIA, NSA, and the military didn’t want a Kennedy as president. JFK wouldn’t go along with starting WWIII, or using nuclear weapons against the U.S.S.R., or against Cuba. Douglass says (and presents evidence) that JFK was about to pull us out of Vietnam permanently, that he was working up to having peaceful discussions with Castro, and that he had a secret peace-seeking letter-writing friendship with Kruschev.

Right before he died, JFK gave a commencement speech at American University in which he announced that the U.S. “will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war…” He also pledged that we would stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and if the rest of the world also stopped, we would not be the first to resume.

I watched a TV show on the assassination that was touted to be an exploration of the different conspiracy theories, but really it was an attempt to de-bunk them. I did not find it nearly as convincing as this book. One problem was that some of the men insisting that it was just Lee Harvey Oswald were only my age! They only know what they’ve been told, just like I do. I don’t find them persuasive.

I think it’s generally pretty easy to believe in the corruption of government. Particularly in that era of such intense fear and hatred of Communism, big sections of our government would have been willing to do anything to try to stop the U.S.S.R. from getting a foothold in Cuba, so close to the U.S. ANYTHING.

Plus, we know how corrupt the CIA and FBI were in the 1960s in trying to stop the progression of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. They’ve shown us over and over again that they operate outside our laws, and outside of what we consider “American” behavior – treating everyone fairly, not punishing people for crimes unless they’ve been tried and convicted in a court of law. It’s easy to believe they’ve killed many people who threatened the status quo or the CIA agenda.

The “Unspeakable” that Douglass refers to is a systemic evil. Institutionalized evil. That kind of beaurocratic evil that lets everyone off the hook – no one in particular is responsible. No one has to feel responsible, and no one can be held responsible. The person with the ideas doesn’t actually carry them out; it’s not his fault. Those who carry them out are just following the orders of the middleman, so it’s not their fault. The middleman had no ideas, made no decisions, and performed no actions – he just passed along the message, so it’s not his fault.

I would add that it’s also unspeakable that we are all complicit when we allow evil acts to go on. We are willing to be convinced that it didn’t happen. We are willing to look the other way and not force these agencies to be held responsible for their actions, even though those actions are the exact definition of “Unamerican.” It’s much easier to go on with our days, watch our shows, and think about our own little lives than to admit that there is a problem and that we actually have to do something about it, risking our own personal security and comfort.

In the case of JFK’s death, many of those who tried to tell any truth that was inconvenient to the CIA ended up dead or locked up in mental institutions for the rest of their lives. Bad America!

By way of contrast to murderous political corruption, on “Meet the Press” this week, guess which two political figures were talking about their JOINT work on improving our public education system? Al Sharpton and freaking Newt Gingrich! Not bad, America.