10 things that should be left behind in 2010

So here we are on the cusp of a new year - and by some methods of counting, a new decade. Here are the top 10 things that we continue to hold on to from the 20th century that I think we should be letting go of now that we're 10 years into the 21st ...

1. Smoking. It's gross, smelly, and obscenely expensive, and we've known for 30 years now that it kills. This habit needs to go.

2. Fax machines. They're blurry, require specialized equipment, and don't work nearly as well as emailing a pdf.

3. Having to a) be told where to sign on a credit card slip and b) hand your card to the cashier after swiping it yourself. Everyone ought to know by now what to do when they use a credit card. And if you're going to make use of the time-saving device that is the automatic swiper, then don't pretend that you're actually caring who just used the card.

4. Internet paranoia. The days when the Internet meant scary stalkers and people out to steal your personal information are over. Scary stalkers still exist, and your personal information is everywhere ... but the Internet is a vital tool for the 21st century, and being scared of it is so Y2K.

5. Vista. 'Nuff said. Let's move on to the next bug-filled operating system, please.

6. Bratz dollz and the rest of the slut culture. Let's let our little girls be little girls and stop asking them to wear words on their butts at the age of 6. We all saw where Britney Spears went. Let's learn from her example and let our girls grow up more slowly.

7. No Child Left Behind. (Okay, that may not be 20th century, but the thought process behind it certainly is.) Let's find a more up-to-date educational method, one that allows our children to take their place in the global village that is the 21st-century world. No more money wasted on reams of paperwork, no more reliance on "standardized" testing to measure individual achievement. (It's true, I don't have a good answer ... but I know a bad one when I see it.)

8. The National Enquirer and its ilk. (Pipe dream, yeah yeah yeah.) Let's give celebrities some space and some privacy to be human beings. The saddest part of this Tiger Woods debacle, to me, is that his attempt to retain his privacy has failed so epically. A person's private life should be just that.

9. Suggested questions in the back of books. Come on, people - how old are we? I applaud the rise of book clubs ... but please. Do people really need to be told how to talk about books? I don't think so.

10. Implicit belief in the news. By this point, the mainstream news media exists for pretty much one reason: to raise ratings and earn money by creating widespread fear and panic. The sooner we realize this and stop listening to all these sensationalistic stories, the sooner we reclaim our lives. Let's stop allowing sound bytes and ridiculous headlines and slogans to affect the way we live our lives.

So that's my list. I'm sure you have others, or disagree with some of the above. Let's hope that 2010 sees us all moving forward into the new millennium and letting go of some of the traps of the past.

whittling away

... at the to-do list, that is. No messing around with knives and wood shavings for me! I'm working on getting through three journals, one backed-up email account (also the Facebook messages), a very messy office, and a stack of boxes that need to be refilled with Christmas decorations. Plus several social networking sites that require various amounts of my attention, two books that I'm hoping to have finished by the end of the year (closing in fast) ... and of course three children and one husband that seem to need relatively constant attention when taken in the aggregate.

time flies

Here it is, already two days after Christmas. One week left of Christmas vacation - less than two weeks until our trip to Florida and Disney. When did all that happen?!

5 days (4 1/2, really) until the first day of 2010 ... only that many to try and finish at least two more books. Dragon Age has really slowed my reading rate (ok, basically halted said reading rate), in concert with the fact that the Chelsea Quinn Yarbro novel I'm reading is boring, dense, and formulaic. I'm wrestling with the idea of not finishing it, but haven't made an official decision yet.

Less than a month until kindergarten switchover, and of that month, only one morning that is unscheduled. Wah! How I will miss my free time and my quiet house ... although I won't mind the naptimes with Charles in school and no longer popping in every 15 minutes to ask how much longer his two-hour time will be, or sneaking around to watch my shows from a corner somewhere. (I catch him sometimes, but not all the time. If he grows up warped from too many episodes of Cold Case, I will have only myself to blame!)

But in the meantime, the long winter Sunday afternoon stretches before me. Some constructive things must be accomplished, but I suspect there will also be some Dragon Age play, some child play, some reading and eating and football. How can one afternoon seem endless (in a good way), while so many other things seem so close?

silence!

It's the late afternoon - prime "Snack snack snack" and "Show show show" time, along with other whines and requests - and here I am by myself, surrounded by complete silence! Grandparents are good things. I'm even (relatively) caught up on laundry and to-do list, so I can actually just enjoy the complete lack of sound.

Pardon me while I revel ...

I have nothing to say.

It's true. My brain is a blank canvas currently in the middle of a tug of war between a quite obsession-inducing game and a whole list of things that actually have to get done in my real life (which is quite a bit less interestingly eventful than previously mentioned OIG). Meanwhile my whole plan to burn through books at a rapid pace has been completely derailed, as there's only room for one kind of fiction in my brain at a time, it seems. But the stockings are hung, the presents bought and wrapped, and I managed to get the children off to school this morning with all the proper items. And I'm preparing, albeit not without some wistful sighs, to go an entire day without seeing how things are going in Ferelden. (Yes, I might worry about the OIG being a little too obsessive ... but I've felt the same way about certain books that I've read. They just don't take as long to get to the end of as the OIG.)

5 things I miss ...

about Christmas with my family. Christmases do tend to be a bit bittersweet for me. I always loved them, and I think they were some of our best times together ... but of course, I'm not unconflicted about my family in general, and I'm well aware how much easier it is at the holidays to only have one family to deal with. So a bit of catharsis today:

1. Decorating the tree. My mom never did this one - claimed she was afraid of pine needles - but my dad and I did. We'd pick out the tree together and put on all the ornaments. So many of them had stories. I wish I remembered half of those!

2. Tom and Jerrys! This was my dad's signature Christmas drink. Whiskey and hot milk (mine was - usually - minus the first) with this wonderful sweet creamy nutmeggy foamy topping. I could have eaten just a bowl of the topping. We always had them the night we put up the tree.

3. Sleigh-bells at my Grandma's. Scoff all you want - look for real-world explanations if you must - but I vividly remember two years running waking up in Grandma's bed on Christmas eve (while she and my mom were sleeping on either side of me) and hearing sleigh bells. I can think of real-world explanations, too ... but a small part of me will never be entirely convinced. And wouldn't mind waking up any Christmas eve to that same sound!

4. My mom's vast collection of Christmas records. She had everything. You could play them for a day and never repeat, at least! We loved playing them and singing along.

5. Christmas dinner. (This could be part of a larger category - I just miss the dinners!) My dad was a good cook, and he shone on the meat and gravy category. My mom made good sides and great pies. And then we'd sit around with coffee and whoever was part of the extended family that year and there would be lots of talking.

My job now is to make Christmases for my kids memorable enough that they look back on them later with a similar sense of nostalgia. My pleasure!

5 random thoughts

No book reviews today! Or tomorrow, either, it looks like. But it's been an eventful day already (at 10:20, and without having left the property), so I'm feeling a bit disjointed. Hence, randomness.

1. It's 95 days till the first day of spring. Not that that means actual spring here in Massachusetts, but it's a lot closer to it!

2. Veronica is on her fourth consecutive watching of "Grinchie" this morning. If it makes her happy (and I don't have to watch it with her), I'm fine with it. Especially since it loops back on by itself and doesn't require me to go manipulate the remote.

3. Woohoo! It appears that Project Runway season 7 will be back in January, along with the next season of American Idol. No word on The Amazing Race or Top Chef's next seasons.

4. Woohoo as well for Blogger - I inadvertently closed the browser and when I opened it my draft was still here waiting to be finished. I appreciate that!

5. Tonight I finish reading A Christmas Carol to the boys. It went pretty far over their heads in places, but I think they enjoyed it. Next up? Not sure, really. I have 9 books in the queue for them and am not sure how to choose which one goes next. It might be time to use the dice!

book reviews

(Yes, again! Woohoo, coming to the end of a lot of half-finished books.)

Melissa Wiley, On Tide Mill Lane. The second installment in the Laura's grandmother series. It really pulled no punches about the realities of life in a working man's household during wartime in the early 19th century. It did seem that more of the plot went on around (and over the head of) the main character than in the first book, but I suppose given that she was 5 at the time of the setting, that's to be expected.

Paul Aurandt, More of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. I suppose Paul Harvey and "The Rest of the Story" are a bit anachronistic now ... and admittedly, between having read the book before and being a lot more historically aware than I used to be (along with the extra 30 years of knowledge gathering since the book's publication) many of the stories have lost their wow factor. Still, they're interesting stories and a good reminder to look at history - and at story-telling - from a different perspective and see what things look like that way.

David Laskin, The Children's Blizzard. A fascinating look at the events of a disastrous Great Plains blizzard in 1888. (I read all 200+ pages in two sittings, about two hours total. It was that good. Plus, I'd never have been able to sleep if I didn't finish it and find out what happened to all the characters.) Good research, a lot of great background on the people involved, what seemed to me to be good science in explaining the weather conditions - altogether, a really good book.

John Greenleaf Whittier, Whittier. The collected works. Not bad, but the section with the hundreds of antislavery poems nearly did me in - how much can you really say about the same topic without losing your audience? And overall, the poetry just didn't grab me.

book reviews

Joseph M. Marshall III, The Journey of Crazy Horse. I found this one very interesting. I haven't read as much about the Native American perspective as I probably should have, given my interest in the history of the American West. Marshall is a tribesman (a few generations removed) of Crazy Horse, and so had that knowledge to draw on when researching and writing the book. I particularly liked that the chapters telling the story of Crazy Horse's life were alternated with chapters detailing Marshall's modern perspective on the events. I don't know that I'm all that interested in reading it again, but I quite enjoyed reading it the first time.

Melissa Wiley, Little House by Boston Bay. The first in a series of books about the childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder's grandmother, who grew up in Massachusetts in the early 19th century. It has the flavor of Wilder's work, if not the intimacy and immediacy. (And how could it have, really? Wilder knew and loved her characters, while anyone writing today may admire and appreciate, but cannot have the same warmth.) Nonetheless, it's a nice little slice of life tale about a fairly understudied time.

L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside. As the last book in the Anne series, and one that's about her daughter rather than Anne herself, this could be perceived as lifeless and uninteresting ... if you hadn't read it. Once upon a time when I was young and foolish, I made a list of the top 10 books I've ever read, and Rilla of Ingleside was on it. I don't know if I would or could make such a list today, but I could still make a case for this book. It takes place during World War I, from the perspective of a young girl watching her brothers and sweetheart going off to the war, but without the glossiness that many books of that theme have. This one details the strain of staying home and waiting for the boys who may never come back, the complication of dealing with all the things that have changed, the challenge of learning hard lessons too young and too fast. I read Montgomery's journals for this time period, and realized that many of the scenes in the book are things that occurred during her own life, and I believe that may be what imparts the realism and the true pathos of the book. I think it's her best work by a couple of miles and wish it was more appreciated.

Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason and the Case of the Spurious Spinster. This one was a bit complex, and I think didn't lay the groundwork for the denouement as thoroughly as it could have. Also, the events around the murder seemed to call for more emotion from Mason and his secretary than they showed. Nevertheless, it was an amusing plot with vivid characters.

book reviews

Moving right along!

L.M. Montgomery, Rainbow Valley. Here again, there's a lack of Anne in the book. Frankly, there's not much of Anne's children, either. The real stars of the book are a new family - Anne and her family are just the supporting players. Nonetheless, it's a heart-warming and interesting book well in the Mongtomeryan tradition.

John Grogan, Marley and Me. This was a really enjoyable book. I'm not sure I would want to see all that brutal honesty in a movie - or if the most honest parts made it in there - but I found it refreshing and touching in the book. As a memoir of a modern family and a dog story, it's quite successful and well worth reading. (So much for my inner book snob, which likes to scoff at really popular books. Sometimes, they're popular for the right reasons!)

Larry McMurtry, Books: A Memoir. Interestingly, this book was not at all what I expected. I thought it would be about reading books, collecting books, writing books ... etc. Instead, it was a chronicle of McMurtry's life as a book scout, book buyer, and book seller, with a bit of the rest of it (although really not much at all) thrown in. I found it quite interesting - I realized along the way that there's a whole book world out there that I never knew about and am not that interested in, the world of the rare book collector - but it wasn't exactly the book I wanted to read.

Howard R. Garis, Uncle Wiggily and the Sugar Cookie. I had to buy this - it's one of those books you half-remember from your childhood and feel the need to reown, if only so you can read it again and remember the other half! A very simple book, but spiced with nostalgia was quite enjoyable.

the changing face of the snow day

The wintry white is coming down hard ... and I just put the kids on the bus, rejoicing all the way. Was I happy to say goodbye to them for the day? Not so much. Did I think it was better they stay in school all day instead of staying home and playing outside and throwing snowballs? Not really. Am I happy that at the end of June there'll be one less day to make up? You bet.

Once upon a time, a snow day was a happy thing to contemplate. You wake up and the windows have that certain special white glow, and it just makes you feel happy. But come the end of June, will you still be glad you had that day off? Last year, the kids were one snow-day shy of having to go to school in the week of the 4th of July. That, frankly, is ridiculous, unless you go to a year-round school, which we don't.

So now it's the trade-off - should I be happy over an extra day at home during the winter (a winter that is pretty likely to be filled with snowy days, and which we will be tired of well before it ends) - or sad over a day lost in the summer?

time

I think a lot about time - using time, organizing time, what time is it?, what time do I have to be somewhere?, etc. It's a finite resource, and as such should be used wisely ... but it should also be savored. Used consciously. I remember once reading a pregnancy book that admonished that every time a mom-to-be opened her mouth, she should think, "Is this the best bite I can give my baby?" I scoffed at that particular advice - like pregnancy isn't stressful enough! - but I see the point when applied to time. Is this the best thing I can do with this minute? is a question that can drive you nuts ... but is occasionally useful to contemplate.

"Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and don't waste time."
- last words of Michelangelo

"But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Time you enjoyed wasting, is not time wasted."
- T.S. Eliot

I think the answer lies somewhere in the midst of those three comments - to use time thoughtfully, to choose what you do with it deliberately, and not to let anyone else define what uses are a "waste".

book reviews

Louis L'Amour, Milo Talon. A western mystery! A tangled, twisted web that had me completely confused and frustrated and glued to the book until I finished it. Something fresh and new from Mr. L'Amour, who rarely fails to satisfy.

Anne Perry, Ashworth Hall. A little too political and conspiracy-theory-riddled for me, and I felt the denouement lacked clarity and was a bit unsatisfying. Also, I thought Charlotte's whole subplot was a distracting tangent that she would not have gone on ... but I liked the focus on the secondary characters and several of the subplots.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams. I don't believe I've read this one since Matthew died, and I found the latter half of the book more meaningful than I used to. It's a bit more Anne-focused than many of the other books of the series, and the supporting characters are interesting and well-drawn.

Martin H. Greenberg, ed., Murder Most Confederate. Well, this was a disappointment. I was excited to read it, thinking I might get some interesting ideas for a book I've been toying with, and since I like a good mystery, was hoping there would be a few. Across the board, these stories were just dreadful. Some were poorly written (either way too purple in the prose or simply riddled with bad grammar), many were poorly researched (apparently knowledge of the period wasn't a prerequisite to publish in the book), others were simply unimaginative (one whole story was lifted directly from real life without only the feeblest attempt to disguise it), and, worst of all - very few of them were actually murders! Many were supernatural-esque, others were the trials of war, and only a few had any hint of mystery. SUCH a disappointment.

more random thoughts

It feels like another random thoughts day. I have a fair amount to get done, a lot of things scheduled, and am feeling a bit scattered and disjointed. So here we go ...

I do not understand why some mornings the kids are up and ready to go bright and early, and others I have to drag them out of bed still trying to pry their eyelids open.

Where the heck do Phineas and Ferb go to school that they get 104 days of summer vacation? My kids are lucky if they get more than 65.

The only reason I'm at all looking forward to snow is so it can stabilize the snowman figures in the front yard. Otherwise, it can wait till Christmas Eve and go away in early January, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm feeling pretty good about having the fun family Christmas stuff done, except that now I have to focus on the far less interesting school-related Christmas stuff ... when did it become necessary to gift everyone you come in contact with? So tedious.

I'm reading Larry McMurtry's memoir, Books, and will review it later, but I was particularly struck by one section where he talks about his extremely large library and how he no longer feels intimately connected with it, in large part because he no longer has the possibility of rereading every title contained within. I can see that happening to me someday and will be extremely unhappy when the day arrives.

I've discovered a new definition of luxury - the personal librarian. Imagine having enough money to be able to employ a personal librarian!

I find locked doors in the house infuriating. I don't particularly like closed doors, either. Don't know why.

Honestly, I don't set out to wear matching colors with my daughter every day. Something in my subconscious must go for the same colors as I lay out our clothes at night. When I catch myself, I fix it ... but there are lots of times I don't catch it.

70 in December?!

It's almost surreal. Walking outside the house this morning, the warmth hit us like a newly opened oven. After a near-monsoon overnight, the day has been damp but sunny and the temps nearly summerlike.

(A big pink monster with a mouthful of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup is roaring at me. ... Okay, she seems to be done now.)

People seem to be not entirely happy about this - either they're longing for the arrival of the snow (this is not an affliction I'm suffering from this year), or are somewhat bemused and discomfited by the unwinterlike atmosphere.

(The pink monster, having swallowed the Peanut Butter Cup, now appears to be a slightly larger than average 4-year-old girl. Who knew?)

Personally, despite my concern for all the bulbs that are sprouting, I'd be more than happy to hang on to this weather this year. I may be in a hurry to get all my Christmas prep done, but I'm in no hurry to begin the 4- or 5-month siege of cold weather and snow that's due to begin anytime now!

5 things that make me happy today

I believe it's time for a 5 things day. It's Wednesday, my to-do list is full, I'm back to the school routine and completely exhausted, and I started a new diet and exercise regime yesterday. (And no, I'm not talking about it. I'm told the best way to doom a new routine is to talk--or worse, to blog--about it. So I'm not. I might complain, though.)

1. Christmas decorations! Love my tree, love my ornaments, love the lighted decorations on the lawn.

2. Computer games. Not only are they fun, they keep you glued to your seat so you don't get up and have that cookie that you really, really want. Level 72, here we come!

3. Reading to my boys. We just finished Escape to Witch Mountain and are on A Christmas Carol. The language and many of the Britishisms are way over their heads, but they enjoy it anyway. Woohoo! Next up, either Ben and Me or The Princess and the Goblin.

4. Coffee. It is my considered opinion that coffee is good. You heard it here first!

5. Having said good-bye to the infant and toddler stages of life! All my children can feed themselves, dress themselves, buckle themselves into their own carseats, and speak and think for themselves. It just gets better and better as they get older!

hungry

I love food. Have I made that clear already? Right now, I'm sitting here trying to decide what to have for lunch.

Most days, the options are pretty simple. PB&J, ramen, cereal, oatmeal, whatever's in the fridge for leftovers. If I'm especially hungry, not feeling well, or motivated, I could do a frozen meal or scrambled eggs or maybe a bacon sandwich.

Today, however, there are extra options - turkey soup and leftovers from the full turkey dinner extravaganza (except the cranberry sauce, which I finished off yesterday). But having had turkey at least once a day since last Thursday, am I burnt out on it? Hm.

book reviews

Yep, more of 'em! I've been burning through the books, since we're getting closer to the end of the year and I want to finish as many as possible. I still think 2010 will be a third "no new books year", sadly enough.

Antonia Barber, The Ghosts. I hadn't read this one in years - one of those books you had a copy of as a kid, then it disappeared somewhere along the way. My excellent husband found me a copy - long after I'd forgotten both title and author's name - and it held up quite nicely to rereading. The mystery is a bit simplistic, but the plot is good and inventive and you care about the characters.

Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. I liked his first book quite a bit. This one I felt rambled a bit too much, and to be honest, I didn't find the overall framing of the book by quoting all his public speeches to be that interesting. He's a good writer with a lot of interesting things to say, but this book missed the mark, as far as I'm concerned.

Louis L'Amour, Kilrone. Very solid. Nice Some interpersonal issues could have done with being tied up a little better - the ending was a little more abrupt than I'd have liked - but it had plenty of action and a decent plot.

Alexander Key, Escape to Witch Mountain. I read this one to the boys, and they really got into it. While reading aloud I noticed that it has a lot of exposition and a lot of journey to fill in what's essentially a pretty short story, but it's well-written and you feel for the characters as they try to figure out who they are and how to get back to their people.

book reviews

Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I've read this one several times, and I find it more meaning-filled and beautiful every time. The messages about love, relationships, and the process of getting old are timeless. The movie is good; the book is transcendent. Well worth reading. And reading again.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside. A nice little installment in the series. Lots of little stories about Anne's children and the usual side stories about the local families. Very much in Montgomery's style. Not her best, but a nice light read.

Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City. The further adventures of the madcap San Franciscan crew. A bit wacky and hard to believe, but still quite enjoyable to read.

Time Life, Voices of the Civil War: Gettysburg. A compilation of original letters and diary entries regarding the battle of Gettysburg from start to finish, with an overview of the battle. Very nice for reference.

Thanksgiving reflections

No, this isn't going to be a post filled with thankfulness mush. Not that I have a problem with that - I live a great life and it's only right that I should be thankful for all the blessings that crowd every day of it - but it's not what's on my mind right now.

The last couple of days, as I've been wallowing in the pre-Christmas frenzy that has me well into the cards, the presents, and the wrapping already, I've been wondering why I don't get more excited about Thanksgiving. It's a non-religious holiday; it's a holiday with a basis in American history (albeit a very gray basis that brings up a lot of questions that are difficult to explain to small children ... last night's discussion of why the Indian "war whoop" can be offensive went well over Charles's head); it's all about good food; and I love Plimoth. So why isn't it more exciting? Why do I skip right over the turkey feathers and head straight for the snowmen and candy canes?

The reason, I think, is that it's just a long weekend that starts with a big meal around here. We don't travel anywhere, don't have family in to visit, and just have a nice quiet weekend. Of course, I LIKE that we don't travel anywhere, and not having a family (my particular family) to deal with is actually one of the things I'm thankful for, and I don't knock nice quiet weekends. But it's not that different, to me, from Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Columbus Day - all weekends that I like, but none of which really feel like a big special celebration.

Granted, my lack of excitement about Thanksgiving doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother other people, so I don't much mind being conflicted about the quiet holiday. Because I know if I had the big boisterous family-filled Norman Rockwell-style holiday, I'd be conflicted about that, too, with half of me wishing we could just stay home and eat turkey and have a nice quiet weekend.

At least I'm consistent about some things!

must get out more!

I live half an hour from downtown Boston. You know how often I go there?

That's right, I don't. An entire city at my disposal, but getting down there never makes it onto the schedule.

I've been reminded of this fact this week, as both last night and the night before I was in Boston picking my friend (in town with her show) up at her hotel and dropping her off. The second time I even took my kids. You know, the ones who have almost never been there. To the big city that they live half an hour away from. They had a great time, put up with the traffic lights and how long it took to find a parking garage, and were sad (despite it being dark and late at night) to go home, even though all we'd done was walk through a few streets and eat at McDonald's.

So let this be a reminder to me that one of the country's major cities, a city with a lot of history and a lot of culture, rests pretty much at my fingertips and it's really irresponsible of me not to take my children (not to mention myself) into it more often.

book reviews

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars. A very Montgomeryan book. Lots of interesting characters, little side stories here and there, all drawn together by the main narrative. Very enjoyable.

Jo-Ann Fabrics, Your Guide to Creativity. This weighty tome was given to me by my in-laws before Greyson was born. I just finished it. It is absolutely chock full of good ideas, how-tos in every branch of home-related creativity you can think of. Sadly, it will probably go on my shelf and sit there gathering dust for a good decade before I get around to working on any of its ideas ... but it's good to know it will be there in case I need it. Definitely a reference worth having.

John Berendt, The City of Falling Angels. I find Berendt's style both unique and interesting. He does what I think so many of us would like to do - finds a place that interests him, then somehow manages to get around and meet people and really get a sense of the fabric of the place. And he always finds an underlying story to weave all the others together. It makes for fascinating reading and gives the reader the sense of actually knowing something about a place, in this case Venice, where they've never been.

Joel Wainwright, Decolonizing Development. This is my brother-in-law's book based on his Ph.D. dissertation. It's essentially a discussion of the way colonialism and colonization have negatively impacted the lives of the Maya and the efforts of the Maya to reclaim themselves. There was, I admit, a lot of jargon that went over my head, but overall I found the book quite well-written - and unusually for a scholarly work written for other scholars, I could hear Joel's voice strongly in the writing. I don't know that I gained any earth-shattering knowledge, but I did find it interesting reading and appreciate having been exposed to the perspective.

Monday, Monday

Can't trust that day.

Actually, come to think of it, I find Monday all too reliable. It shows up bright and early when the alarm goes off and reminds me that it's time to get up, to get the kids up, to pack them up, to send them off to school. To start the week. I like to have Monday unscheduled, if I can, so I can get a good, energetic start, get some things done, feel like I'm on top of my to-do list.

When Monday comes complete with first-thing-in-the-morning plans, I wind up feeling behind before I even sit down to look at the to-do list, and the dropped ball rolls down the hill gathering moss until it's too ponderous to contemplate.

Time to catch it now before it gets away from me ...

random thoughts

Today I'm going to write down all the little thoughts I have that I want to share with someone but tend to forget about before I get the opportunity. (It'll be kind of like a lot of Tweets/Facebook status updates, but a lot more rapid-fire. I always try to hold those down so I won't annoy anyone.)

Last night I wished my first Merry Christmas of the season and saw my first holiday-decorated house of the season. :)

I've never understood the appeal of The West Wing. Even Aaron Sorkin can't make the daily doings of the White House seem interesting.

Recording "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was a nice thing for Gordon Lightfoot to do. It keeps the memory of those men alive and is a reminder of the dangers of life on the sea.

I wish there was any one thing I found as harmless and comforting as my daughter finds sucking her thumb.

Prerecorded phone calls should be abolished. If it's not important enough to hire a real person to make the call, it's not important enough to call about. (I make an exception for the school superintendent's announcement of school closing due to inclement weather. But that's it.)

I suddenly want to read a dialogue between Free Range Kids's Lenore Skenazy and Baby Name Wizard Laura Wattenberg on the naming practices of free range parents, how names affect our kids' lives in the world, free range or otherwise, and how to tell what kind of parent you are by what you named your kid.

The U.S. adult smoking rate has risen. What century do we live in again? How can people squander their health and money that way for nothing?

My daughter is quite irritating with her constant demands for Christmas and visits to a hotel and her birthday ... all of them RIGHT NOW. Or possibly tomorrow. But certainly no later than that, or she will whine, pout, and stamp her foot.

book reviews

Ivor Noel Hume, Civilized Men. I like Hume's writing - he's one of my favorite archaeology/history writers - so I was interested when I saw he'd written a fiction novel. I later discovered that apparently it was originally a screenplay, so the book is more a novelization, which shows. Also, the production budget for the book was very, very low. The typos and lack of copyediting made some passages really painful to read. But I got through, and I did enjoy the story. I thought a bit too much time was spent on all the high muckety-mucks of Jamestown and their political machinations, and not quite enough time spent on the two young men whose experiences in the New World are ostensibly the focus. I'd have liked more detail on their lives in and around Jamestown. Altogether it was a good story, but not one I would be able to get through again, thanks to the cheapo publishers.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles. Since the base premise of this novel - that a woman is placed beyond the pale by being the victim of a sexual assault - is such an outdated concept, I had little patience for the ramifications of the event. Why should the man who married her think her seducer was her "real husband", while he doesn't feel the same about the woman he slept with before marriage? Why doesn't she realize it? Tess's self-effacing ways are unbelievable, her husband unworthy of the name, and it's all told in such tedious prose that I'm amazed I made it all the way through the book. Sorry, Mr. Hardy, but you don't fit in the modern world.

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island. Well, how much is there to say, really? Anne Shirley goes to college - it's a fun book, I love Aunt Jamesina and Patty's Place, and it's L.M. Montgomery, whose style is simple and lovely.

Anne Perry, Pentecost Alley. I think this one does a good job of drawing in some of the secondary characters while also advancing the metaplot. (I'm not a fan of metaplots, and you'll hear more about that as I get further into the later works in the series, but in some cases it's kind of inevitable that your characters advance in their lives and the lives become more complicated. This book fits those complications into the underlying mystery fairly seamlessly.) Altogether, a solid entry in the series ... and it's been long enough since I read the last one that I'm not so burnt out on Perry's style.

the inevitable

Around here, we're mostly pretty healthy. I can't remember the last time one of the kids had to be taken to the doctor due to illness, or missed a day of school. Lou and I come down with things slightly more often (and of course he deals with near-constant sinus infections), but in general illness rarely gets in the way of the things we need and want to do.

This year everyone's perceptions in the area of viruses and other germs going around seem pretty heightened (possibly also distorted, but that's difficult to be clear on). H1N1 has dominated the focus, but of course, the vast majority of what's going around tend to be the nonnamed illnesses that congregate wherever large groups of children go. All of which makes it nearly inevitable that one or more of the kids (and therefore us) will come down with something any day now. I go around trying to gauge levels of contagion, whether that sneeze really means something, and if my throat really feels that scratchy or am I just talking myself into it because someone mentioned flu.

(The eldest child got the seasonal vaccine. The younger two are scheduled for it at the end of the month. None of them are likely to get the H1N1 because of the shortages and the complication of trying to get to the pedi's office twice in a month. I'm always on the fence about flu vaccines and whether they're necessary/a good idea. I suspect it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, but can't be sure.)

But of course, truthfully, there's not much I can do. Between tae kwon do, school, preschool, gymnastics, eating out, the bus, grocery stores, playdates, work, and so on, there's no way to avoid being exposed. So the best thing I can do is be informed, be aware of how they're all feeling, and be ready to drop everything and pull out the chicken soup and hot cocoa whichever morning one of them wakes up unschoolworthy. And try not to worry about it too much before it happens!

"miss" vs. "ma'am"

I'd be interested to see where I stand in this spectrum. I'm aware that a lot of women I know are offended by being referred to as "ma'am" because they don't feel old enough for that. (You know, when you're out and someone picks up something you dropped, or you're talking to a host/ess at a restaurant, or something like that.)

Personally, I feel that the term "miss" has an implied sneer, a condescension. I'm in my 30s, I have gray hair, I usually have at least one child with me. All of this, I feel, has earned me the consideration that I am mature enough to be a "ma'am", and it does annoy me to be referred to as "miss". I don't mind it as much from someone who is clearly older than I am - in that case, "miss" is somewhat warranted - but especially if the person is clearly in their early 20s or younger, the sneering "miss" is just insulting.

Granted, this is a pretty minor annoyance. When someone refers to me as "miss", it's a brief flash of annoyance and I move on, and I've never been moved to correct anyone ... but I do wish we had a societal standard term for women. Men have Mr. and Sir. Women have Mrs., Ms., or Miss, all with different connotations, and Miss or Ma'am, which are highly polarizing.

reality TV update

Three of our reality shows are running right now - Top Chef, Project Runway, and The Amazing Race. (Okay, Lou only tolerates PR, but he bet on the winner, giving him a vested interest.) At the beginning of the season for each show, we bet on who would be the eventual winner - prize to be determined if and when we win. (I've won twice, both times for The Amazing Race, earning myself a mother's ring and a pair of black leather boots. Lou's won once, I think also for TAR, and I'm not sure what he bought. I should follow up on that.)

Top Chef Las Vegas has had a fairly smooth season, all things considered. The talent pool was divided into two tiers - the really talented chefs who are likely to win, and the less talented chefs who are not going to make it to the finale. Personal issues have been kept to a minimum (other than the growing disdain for Robin, this season's "why is she still here?" victim), and it has largely been all about the food. This is a show that has actually changed the way we approach and talk about food in our house. We're not adventurous enough to consider ourselves "foodies", but I think we appreciate the effort that goes into fine cuisine more. Our picks for this season: Kevin (Lou) and Bryan Voltaggio (Shay), both of whom seem destined to go far and certainly have the capability to win. I give Kevin the edge at this point ... but you never can tell.

Project Runway has had some trouble finding its feet in Los Angeles and on Lifetime. I think the cast this season was a bit of a mismatch, and while I agree that the final three were somewhat inevitable, I don't think any of them is particularly outstanding. Personal issues have clearly simmered under the surface, as the four women remaining in the finale couldn't even speak to each other by the last day of the last challenge. The lack of the usual judges has hurt the show, as well, I think - each challenge may need to stand on its own, but I think it's necessary to have someone other than Heidi have some idea of the continuity of each designer's PR journey. I think the final three will show some interesting work, though, so I look forward to the finale. Our picks this season: Christopher (Lou) and Gordana (Shay), both of whom were eliminated in the antepenultimate episode, in 5th and 4th places, respectively. Not a bad showing.

The Amazing Race has had a very good season. The constant bunching every time there's a plane ride involved has been annoying, but it has cut down on the post-plane ride bunching when things aren't open when the racers arrive, so it's a wash. All the teams that were uber-annoying were eliminated early, and the remaining teams are largely pretty good racers. Plus, the Detours have been more complicated and there have been fewer times when one Detour looked insanely hard and the other one looked so easy that they all chose it. Our picks this season: Sam and Dan (Lou) and Flight Time and Big Easy (Shay), both of whom are strong teams and have every chance of making the finale. We both had Meghan and Cheyne as our second choice, so we'll get half-credit each if they win. Since those three teams could easily make up the final three, it should be a good finale for someone in our house!

And of course, we're a scant two months away from the season premiere of the next season of American Idol, which was a sagging franchise until last year, when a young man named Adam Lambert took the stage and reminded us what it was good for. Hoping for a similar talent next season! (And kind of looking forward to Ellen replacing Paula.)

500th post!

I just happened to notice that as I went to the "dashboard". I had something entirely else in mind to write today, but I feel the need to do something to mark this occasion.

Hm. Well, the 500th book in my catalog currently is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. Not necessarily my favorite, but entertaining. It does not have 500 pages, so no help there.

Ah, I have it! Things I have done at least 500 times this year:

1. drank coffee
2. said "No" to my children
3. tickled my children
4. brushed my teeth
5. thought about how to reorganize my days better
6. wondered when school was finally going to end
7. wondered when school was finally going to start
8. gotten someone a snack (who am I kidding? I'm sure I've done that 500 times this week.)
9. sat down at my computer (see #8)
10. hugged my most faithful blog reader and told him I loved him :)

Tomorrow back to our regularly scheduled posting. :)

savoring

This may be a repeat. But sometimes it helps to write things down again to remind myself of ... well, of things that it's easy to forget in the heat of the moment.

As you may know, I'm a fairly goal-oriented person. I have traditionally put more stock in the destination than in the journey.

But a couple of years ago, I began making a conscious effort to slow down. To savor my life as it goes by, rather than rushing through it to get to the next mile-marker in the road. I find this makes me a happier, mellower, more generally pleasant person. However, this not being my natural state, it can be difficult to maintain in the midst of the daily grind.

Unfortunately, parenting today doesn't make it easy to kick back and wallow in contentment. There's always something - school budgets, swine flu, reactionary attitudes based on irrational fears - to panic or be outraged about. And that's the bit that I find particularly hard to keep clear of. The panic not so much. I filter pretty well, and I recognize that clear thought and panic don't go well together. Also, I'm not much of a worrier. I like to think about things beforehand, but I mostly don't worry until something's right ahead of me and I can see clearly what there is to worry about.

The outrage is the real issue that I find difficult to duck. Some might say that outrage is good. If you don't get outraged - and share your outrage - how do you change the world? Or, more to my particular concerns, how do you keep the world from changing in ways that you don't like? And there are people out there who can channel their outrage properly and make it a force for good. I am not one of them. When I get outraged, I tend to use big words and complicated sentence constructions that make people think I'm talking down to them. I overstate my case and allow my sense of moral superiority to surface, making the people I'm trying to convince plant themselves even more firmly in the position I'm against. So I've outraged myself, angered the people I was talking to (who generally fall in one friend category or another), and expended a whole lot of energy ... making the situation worse.

So, in the long run, I feel it's more pleasant, more productive, and generally better for everyone if I try to maintain a panic-free and outrage-free life, especially where parenting is concerned. Now if I can only remember that!

happy thoughts

It's a chilly, grey, rainy day here in New England - but I promised an upbeat post, and upbeat I shall be!

Actually, I don't mind the rain. I'm not wild about waiting for the bus in it three times in one day, necessarily, but I like the sound of it falling. I like the look of it falling. In a New England autumn, I like the light that spills off the golden and red trees and brightens up the grey. At night, I like to lie in bed and listen to the droplets fall on the roof and strain my ears to hear(imagine?) the occasional whoosh of the cars going by on a rainy road.

I love that my kids are more likely to go outside on a rainy day than a sunny one. Charles got off the bus today singing about his love for a rainy day (note to self: must play Eddie Rabbitt's "I Love a Rainy Night" for that kid some day). Even as babies, they seemed to enjoy the rain on their faces. I like being out in the rain myself ... by choice, anyway. I don't so much like to be out in the rain when I have to be. There's some odd human psychology for you!

And, of course, I love to be in a cozy, warm, brightly lit house with the little ones while the cold rain falls outside. But then, who doesn't love that?

further Einstein rantings

Really, I thought I was done with this topic yesterday, but then Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids, a blog that I usually respect, posted the Baby Einstein refund as a positive. Now, I know you can't agree with anyone all the time, and that less TV is a tenet of the Free Range ideal - even if it's not one I'm particularly concerned about. But I have to admit, I don't understand what positive message it sends to children if parents admit to having been so duped by marketing that they bought a video they later decided was damaging.

First, let me note that the idea that TV isn't good for kids isn't a new one. We've been hearing about it in various levels of stridency for most of my life. So if all of a sudden a new series of DVDs comes out that claims to be "educational", you still need to weigh that claim against the research. Disney's claim does not negate the parent's responsibility to do adequate research.

Second, I don't understand why the idea (behind the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood) that children might see a commercial is such a bad thing. It sounds like the parents should have seen a few more commercials, so they could have considered Disney's marketing more critically. My kids see a lot of commercials (since I don't believe TV is inherently evil) and yet have a fairly small amount of toys compared to many of their friends. Because I don't buy them everything they see. They see a commercial and cry out, "I want that!", true enough. In response, I either explain why they're never going to get it in a million years or tell them to save their money and buy it themselves if they want it so badly. (They rarely do.) I view these as teachable moments enabling my kids to survive in the electronic world so many parents want to pretend isn't the one we live in.

Finally, I strongly dislike the idea that these parents have given up so much of our collective buying power. By putting such a huge amount of weight on the power of Disney's marketing, this lawsuit basically sends the message that we as consumers will believe what we are told, until someone else tells us differently. The members of this lawsuit have just admitted that they're sheep - and yet they're celebrating as though they're the ones doing the shearing.

(I promise to be done with this now and post something positive tomorrow!)

personal responsibility

Earlier this week, a woman from one of my mothers' groups posted a triumphant notice - that the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood had succeeded in making Disney not only remove any claims that their Baby Einstein videos make children smarter, but also offer refunds to those parents who bought those videos! My fellow parent and her coalition seem to think they've achieved a victory. Personally, I thought it just indicated how completely unwilling we as Americans are to take responsibility for our own mistakes.

The reasoning, as I understood it, is that Disney's marketing of these videos made these people, who ordinarily would be completely opposed to introducing their children to anything on a screen, violate their own principles in the name of making their children smarter. Then, somehow, they decided that their children hadn't become any smarter and may actually have been damaged in some way by having viewed something on a screen ... so clearly, it must all have been Disney's fault. (Here is where I have to say that I feel tremendously sorry for these children: their parents are clearly somewhat obsessed with intelligence, and the poor kids have obviously fallen short of their parents' high standards, since the parents could tell that they weren't made any smarter by Baby Einstein. How insulting to your child, to demand a refund over their lack of brains.)

I understand Disney's capitulation: after all, it probably wasn't that much money, and if it retains goodwill and paints Disney as a caring corporation, it was probably worth it.

But I do not understand this idea that it's someone else's fault when a mistake is made. I'm sure I bought any number of toys that didn't do what I expected them to do ... and then I either tossed them or passed them on to someone who liked them better. In no case did I ask for my money back, unless the toy was actually defective. (In the sense of not working or being broken, not in the sense of not entertaining my child.)

In the same sense that it is not Victoria's Secrets responsibility that I don't look like one of their models when I buy their lingerie, it is not Disney's fault that these parents were willing to sacrifice their principles to move their kids' IQs up a couple of points. Nor is it Disney's fault that looking at some puppets dance to classical music failed to move said kids' IQs.

I think it's a real shame that we as a society are so completely unable to handle mistakes and disappointment on our own.

book reviews

Sorry to have neglected the blog for a bit. Two birthdays in one month (plus various parental and school responsibilities) makes for chaos! I have substantive commentary (rants?) for the next couple of days, but I also have a book backlog. So here goes:

Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny. Fascinating book. I've seen bits and pieces of the movie, but only the early part, so I can't really compare the two, but I enjoyed the book quite a bit. I'm not sure I was wild about the shift in perspective toward the end, but it was a legitimate way of looking at the situation, and the plot in general does make you wonder - what is tolerable in wartime? What kinds of behaviors need to be overlooked? Well worth reading.

A.S. Byatt, The Biographer's Tale. I have a love/hate relationship with Byatt. Some of her work (Possession, for one) is pure genius, some of it is just weird. This one fell into the latter category. The first chapter was mildly interesting, about a young man who decides to leave higher education and falls into becoming a biographer ... but then we left the plot about the young man and started into a bunch of papers all about different people (who went largely unidentified) that he'd found, and it was all quite confusing, I didn't see how or when we were getting back to the young man, and I wasn't particularly interested in him or his findings anyway ... so I dropped it. I always feel vaguely disquieted when I start a book and don't finish it ... but there are a lot of books to be read (and reread) and not enough time.

Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. This is basically Anne of Green Gables, but set in Maine. (It's important to note that Rebecca precedes Anne by 5 years in date of publication.) That said, the characters are good, the story is interesting, and I enjoyed the reread. I wonder what the sequels would have been like. For that matter, I wonder if there are any. Hmmm...

Jean Van Leeuwen, Across the Wide Dark Sea. This is a children's picture book about the voyage of the Mayflower. It's really quite good - surprisingly in depth for the small amount of text it contains, the atmosphere is good, and it doesn't overly sugar-coat the experience, although given that it is told from the point of view of an English child, it is very Anglocentric.

the weather

Yes, it's true, I've been reduced to blogging about the weather. But after being grateful all week that we don't live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, where it snowed last week, I just noted on weather.com that it looks like snow right here in New England, two days from now.

Increasingly as I get older, I appreciate fall. Summer's too hot, winter's too cold, and spring is practically nonexistent. A nice long fall filled with 50- and 60-degree weather is just what I like, and I was looking forward to several more weeks of it. Instead, the temps are dropping slowly but steadily and full-on unpleasant-to-go-outside-in-even-for-a-minute winter weather appears to be marching in. I'm not ready!

(Admittedly, I'm pouting a bit because we had a trip planned for which nice fall weather would have been ideal, and instead the in-laws will be stuck in the house with the kids while the rain - snow?!? - falls, no chance to go do fun outdoor New England things, and we will have to rethink our whole plan, which was hard enough to come up with in the first place.)

Grr.

book reviews

Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason and the Case of the Postponed Murder. A pretty good installment in the series. Interesting plot, good detective work largely done by Mason himself, a client who wouldn't know the truth if it bit her. And for once, the judge was on the side of Perry (and implicitly justice) and the district attorneys were forced to keep their remarks to a minimum. Made for a refreshing change.

Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City. I've read this one a number of times, but its sheer retro zaniness doesn't get old.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea. I found that Anne is a bit more idealized than I remember - her difference from the other girls, her 'innate goodness', her high ideals, her influence on people. It's all a bit hard to swallow. But I also found that Anne is not such an integral part of the book - far more of the plot is about the people she comes into contact with and their stories than it is about hers. As such, Montgomery's characters and feel for her setting are her strengths, so the book is quite enjoyable.

Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom. Rose and Anne have a fair amount in common, although Rose is allowed to have more petty foibles. This book has a slightly different flavor than most of Alcott's work - it is a bit more grown up than many of her tales, and a lot of the themes she likes to use are muted here, forming an undercurrent to the plot.

comparative confidence

One thing that I have noticed recently - as I work toward getting involved in both schools, I have a certain level of anxiety before each group interaction. But that anxiety is much higher in the more unfamiliar environment of the preschool. So the heightened anxiety I feel before a preschool meeting contrasts sharply enough with my lower anxiety toward the elementary school meeting and makes the elementary school meetings something to look forward to by comparison. So despite giving me more to be anxious about, the experience of moving to a new preschool has been a net positive in the arena of my social confidence.

Nice surprise bonus!

book reviews

Peter C. Mancall, ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology. This is a book filled with, well, travel narratives, all from the period when every continent was brand new to anyone who'd never been there before. I thought it sounded interesting, but in practice, it was kind of boring. Everyone's reactions to everyone else were very similar, and overall, I found the reports tedious.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. Obviously a reread, but as fresh and delightful as always. I had forgotten how fast the narrative moved and how much time was packed into the book. I think I appreciated more than ever before the delicacy with which the change and growth in Anne's character and therefore the reaction to her by the people around her were painted.

Rose Wilder Lane, Young Pioneers. I admit, the first half of this book annoyed me a bit - it moved too fast, dwelt on little, and was obviously cobbled together from her parents' stories of their experiences. (Rose Wilder Lane being the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, in case you didn't know.) The second half of the book, where the plot was being moved forward by the actions and decisions of the main character, was much better and more interesting. It really caught the maturization of this newly married young woman who realizes that her decisions are the ones that keep the family going, not those of her impetuous young husband.

Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City. This is my book club's pick for this month. I had picked it up several times over the years and never got around to buying it, so I was quite pleased! And the book was very enjoyable. Weaving the tale of the Chicago World's Fair with a tale of a serial killer preying on the young women who went there, it was well researched and highly readable. If I wished for more detail, that may have been due to gaps in the historical record and/or a wish on the author's part to appear to know more than he did. Either way, I quibble as I would with the dash more salt that might make the steak perfect instead of great.

5 things that make me happy today

It's Monday again, and when the alarm clock went off, I wasn't exactly ready to hop right out and face the day (much less the week). Time for a happiness list!

1. Fall in New England. The leaves are turning, the weather is perfect - not too warm, not too cold - and the apples are plentiful.

2. Hot beverages that give energy. Coffee, tea, cider and cocoa to a lesser extent.

3. Unpacking. I've unpacked a lot of my office tchotchkes and am working my way through the book boxes. Happy to see all my books again!

4. The shrinking TBR pile! The shelf space required is shrinking nicely. I think 2010 will have to be another "no new books" year, but I think there's a light at the end of that particular tunnel.

5. The Amazing Race 15! So far, the season has been quite enjoyable - all the teams eliminated have been annoying, and I won't miss any of them. And there's a high proportion of teams that are enjoyable to watch - looking forward to the rest of the season!

curmudgeon

In a Facebook poll the other day, when asked a number of questions that would tell me which That '70s Show character I am most like, I came up as Red Forman. Now, Red Forman is awesome, and I was pretty pleased with the result ... but it does highlight my tendency to be a curmudgeon. A complainer. A person who, at least by outward persona, resolutely views the glass as half-empty. In short, a grouch.

Sadly enough, this is no new news. I groused my way through high school and college, as well as several jobs. But I really had thought I had a handle on it recently ... and despite the daily small annoyances, am actually really enjoying my life.

But apparently I allow the daily small annoyances to wear on me like drips on a stone. And therein lies the problem. When you're constantly complaining, even funnily, about the little things ... well, who's going to listen when there's really a problem?

Time to remember to smile more and see the brighter side. At least often enough that my lapses into Formanism are amusing rather than tiresome!

book reviews

Read a bunch of books while on my weekend away ... although not as many as I had hoped to. Just about finished unpacking them!

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King. I admit that I find Frodo kind of tedious, but Sam and the rest of the crew more than make up for it. What else is there to say, other than to reiterate my surprise that I never read these as a child/teen. But would I have enjoyed them? Hard to say.

Marguerite Henry, Black Gold. Not my favorite. It seemed to give the story a lick and a promise, dropped plotlines all over the place, and generally felt half-finished. I'm surprised I kept it after the first read.

Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill. A nice quiet little book, very Alcottian, about a group of children (well, preteens and early teens, they seemed to be mostly). The characters were vivid and well differentiated both from each other and from other Alcott books, and the story was a colorful little slice of life. Very enjoyable.

Richie Tankersley Cusick, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Harvest. I picked this one up on a whim. I own several novelizations of TV shows and movies, and find that they can be really interesting, adding color and depth to what's already on TV. This one, not so much. Not at all, actually. I've read better recaps on Television Without Pity. (Not recently, mind you, but that's another post.) Boring and lifeless and does no justice at all to the original script.

book reviews

Louis L'Amour, Kilkenny. This man could have taught a master class on how to have a long career as a writer with a highly individual style and yet still have each book feel different from the others. I think I might have enjoyed this one even more if I remembered the first book with the same characters, but even as it was, I found the plot and characters vivid and interesting.

Burt Hirschfeld, The Ewings of Dallas. Okay, okay, I know. But I used to have the book a long time ago, it's true escapist literature (never mind the massive numbers of plot holes and breaks in the time line you could drive a herd of longhorns through), and I admit I enjoyed rereading it.

Hugh Pentecost, Nightmare Time. This one has the distinction of being not only the last in the series, but also the first one I ever read and the one I enjoy the most. Possibly that's from familiarity. But it's also a good plot, uses the secondary characters better than usual, and has less repetitiveness than many of the installments. Overall, though, I'm glad to have come to the end and will not be rereading the series in publication order again (at least, not this close to each other).

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees. This is one that was given to me as a gift (can't remember from whom, though), and is part of the class of 21st-century fiction that I generally don't enjoy. And, to tell the truth, I'm still a bit weirded out by the fact that I did enjoy it. It definitely has some of the same failings that I have noted about other books of similar type - the strange, almost fantastic bits that threaten to ruin the illusion of reality, the almost painful self-awareness of the book that it is "Literature" - I also felt it had good characters, an interesting story, and failed to be pretentious. (The difference between pretentiousness and painful self-awareness is hard to describe, but it's there.) Overall, I quite liked it, and am a bit disturbed by that.

ahh, preschool

Third child, third preschool. Lots of people really gung-ho about this one (it's a partial co-op, so I guess you have to be) ... and me, I'm feeling like I'm doing everything all wrong, can't get the hang of it, and am annoying folks at every turn.

(Now, I recognize that my social paranoia is coming out, and I'm overreacting. Nevertheless, I was really bothered by it, until I realized a couple of things.)

The first thing I realized is that of course I can't get the hang of this one. It is, as I say, my third preschool. Been there, done that, spent the enthusiasm already. I'm looking at this more as a place that we're drifting through for a couple of years than as a pivotal place in our lives ... which, I realize, shortchanges Veronica's experience a bit. So a bit of an attitude adjustment needed there.

The second thing I realized, though, occurred to me as I was mentally reviewing my previous experiences. Greyson's preschool teachers seemed daunting to me - they seemed great with the kids, not so great with the parents. (Same with Veronica's.) Charles's teachers seemed overly jolly, as if we were all preschoolers, and the one who did the most dealing with the parents was timid and a bit reactionary, putting my back up more than once. I never enjoyed all the paperwork, and never was a big fan of all the little rules and things, of which this newest one has many. Many.

(It's also quite possible that I'm spoiled now that I've been exposed to the High Plain atmosphere, where by and large teachers and parents seem to be on an equal footing, speaking to each other as peers and colleagues more than as teacher and subordinate. Which is generally how I feel looked upon by the preschool teachers - like I'm some kind of inadequate new parent.)

So I think it boils down to that I like older kids better than younger ones, older kids' schools better than older ones, never did get the hang of being a preschool parent, but I have two years left and an expectation (requirement, even) to be an active preschool parent so I'd better suck it up and stop taking it all so personally. After all, it's about Veronica, and she deserves a great experience.

5 things that make me happy today

On a day filled with minor annoyances, it's a good time for a happiness reminder.

1. Plymouth in two days! Woohoo, the bliss!

2. Veronica starting preschool. She's happy, I'm happy, we both get some much-needed space and independence.

3. Happy kindergartener making friends. Sure, his school day wears him out, but it's so nice to watch him play on the playground while all the boys call his name and want him to come play.

4. Burning through my book backlog. I've been making some good progress recently, which makes me very happy!

5. The return of the fall TV schedule. The Amazing Race, Cold Case, Project Runway, CSI, Law & Order, Numb3rs, How I Met Your Mother ... happy to have them all coming back to my TV!

a banner day!

This morning, I took the boys to the bus, sent them off to school, then loaded the little girl into the car and drove her off to her school.

(Here I will confess that when I gave her a kiss and left the room, I did wonder if she would be scared when she figured out I wasn't there, and I did hesitate to leave.)

But leave I did, and with confidence in my little girl's excitement to be in school, I came home to two blissful hours in a completely quiet house all by myself! This is an excitement I've been anticipating for a long time. I admit, I didn't do too much with it - other than cracking open the peppermint ice cream and having it for breakfast - but it was most very enjoyable. Looking forward to twice a week for the rest of the fall semester! (Starting next week, they'll be working mornings, but they'll be working mornings in total privacy. Luxury, I tell you!)

And for the curious - yes, when she figured out I wasn't there, she was afraid I'd gotten lost and started to cry. When was that? At pick-up time, after three hours of school. :) She did just fine.

book reviews

David McCullough, The Great Bridge. I'm a big fan of McCullough, and found this history of the design and building of the Brooklyn Bridge both informative and entertaining. If I had any complaints, they're with the gaps in the historical record that wouldn't allow McCullough to explain all events and complexities fully - but he did the most he could with what he had to work with. He did more than justice to the scope of the project and the obstacles faced by those who built it.

Hugh Pentecost, Remember to Kill Me. Despite my nitpicking at various repetitive elements in the series, it continues to be enjoyable escapist literature, and as such, this installment did not fail in its purpose.

Kathryn Kenny, Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Midnight Marauder. Trixie's cases are usually a bit more weighty than the rash of petty thefts and vandalizations that characterize this one, but the book allowed for a little more character development than usual and was a good mystery. I continue to slowly make my way up the higher-numbered and lesser-known Trixies - they rarely disappoint!

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac. I tried. I really did. But this one was too much for me. The homilies were interesting, but the essays and poems dreadfully boring. And the lack of the almanac part (this edition was selected writings only) truncated them so much as to be basically worthless from lack of context. In the end, it just wasn't worth the time.

insidious

Today, I took my youngest two children to McD's, as a celebration of Veronica's first week of preschool. She was very excited about the Barbie bracelets in the girls' Happy Meal toys, so though I would have preferred to get her a Hot Wheels car, I gave in, hoping she would, indeed, get a bracelet.

No such luck. No, instead it was a toy compact. Within 10 minutes of having opened this toy, she was asking me to change her into a dress and making motions as though she wanted to put on lipstick.

Now, here's the thing: I don't wear makeup. I have not worn makeup a single time since she was born. My mother-in-law, the only other woman she sees getting dressed on a regular basis, doesn't wear makeup around here. So to the best of my knowledge, Veronica has never seen a real woman wearing makeup. In addition, I have never bought her dress-up clothes, toy purses, toy makeup, toy (or real) high heels.

So where did she get it? How did she know that was a compact for makeup, or how to put on lipstick?

Apparently keeping little girls from makeup is as futile as keeping little boys from guns.

the bad girl books

On top of my recent deep thoughts regarding the Little House series, I just reread Little Women, and was struck by the similarities between the heroines, and the families, for that matter. Both Laura and Jo are the second daughter of 4. Both of them are the harum-scarum tomboy of the house, and feel like the cares of the household fall most strongly on their shoulders. Both have quiet, serene, "good" older sisters, and both struggle with their own feelings of inadequacy/jealousy/anger over not being able to calm their turbulent emotions. Both have two younger sisters who are also much calmer and quieter. Now, the characters of Beth and Amy are far more fleshed out than the characters of Carrie and Grace, but in both cases the younger sisters also tend to be portrayed as more quiet, peaceful, and dutiful than the main characters of Jo and Laura.

Since both series are semi-autobiographical, the comparison leads me to the question: were Laura Ingalls and Louisa Alcott really such unusually out-of-the-box characters as they would lead us to believe? If Mary Ingalls and Anna Alcott had been the writers instead, how would their views of themselves have differed from the way their sisters portrayed them?

I have always identified strongly with Laura Ingalls, and to a lesser extent with Jo March ... but then again, you're supposed to. They're the main focus of their books. Do most girls reading these books identify with the main characters, or are there actually women out there who see themselves being more like Mary/Meg or the younger siblings?

Do we all think of ourselves as fish out of water, that much more awkward and rebellious than everyone else around us?

overextended

So here we are, a couple of weeks into the school year, and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Room parenting, volunteering, the amount of time needed to spend schmoozing with the other moms - it all requires a lot of energy and being "on". Frankly, it's not my natural state and it gets quite tiring. Leading to the inevitable moment (not here yet, but I feel it coming) when I stop in my tracks and wonder what the heck I was thinking getting into all of this.

learning to fly

Big day tomorrow! I'll be escorting my youngest fledgling to school, where she'll begin to grow her feathers. It's a day she and I have been counting down to for days ... weeks ... months, even. And while I make the big talk about how I just can't wait to have them all off my hands (and that's indisputably true, as I long for freedom and autonomy like my next breath of air), I have to admit that there are likely to be tears. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next day, as those are mutual expeditions, but next week, as I leave her to begin the part of her life that requires her independence, I suspect there might be a few drops - nothing fills me with pride and delight as much as watching my children move forward into their lives. I can just see her with her little "packpack", saying hello to her friends, painting little pictures, and generally starting to learn about the world outside our house and our little circle of family. And tomorrow, I really will begin to see all of that, and her delight in it as well. And I will savor it.

5 things that make me happy today

It's Monday morning ... always a good time to be reminded of happiness!

1. Veronica starts preschool this week! I can't tell you how happy both she and I will be when that happens - we're both very ready!

2. The quiet time after the boys are on the bus. It's so nice - Veronica's quietly watching her show, and I can get a jump-start on my day while also getting some peace and quiet to gear myself up for the day to come.

3. Less than two weeks to Plymouth! I admit, half my brain has gone on ahead of me and is already reveling in the privacy, the autonomy, the colonial smell of wood-ashes!

4. Fall in New England. While everyone else is bemoaning the loss of summer, I'm quite happy to see the cooler weather arrive and would like it if the whole fall is one long 65-degree day.

5. Routines. I'm developing my night-time and morning routines, and they're definitely helping so far to keep the back-to-school schedule both manageable and enjoyable.

morning has broken

School's been back in session for a week now, and mornings have been ... interesting. At this early stage, I don't think it's an accomplishment to say that I've been on top of backpack mail, lunches, shoes, and general prep for the kids to be ready for the bus. (And, actually, given that Charles's bus tag was misplaced and I didn't even think about it for his second and third days of school, and that Greyson's birthday page is still sitting there waiting for us to choose and print a picture, I can't really make that claim anyway.) I haven't even made it through the week without snoozing the alarm.

But the boys are enjoying it even less than I am. Charles apparently hadn't realized that he now goes to school every day (a fact that makes me even more glad he's in half-day ... he'd be impossible to live with in full day), Greyson doesn't like to have me wake him up. They've been okay demeanor-wise (in the morning, anyway), but clearly none of us were quite prepared for the routine to start again.

I think I need to get them some kind of way to wake themselves up in the morning, as having me do it bothers them. And we all need to be better about bedtime and to get used to the routine. It's just a constant reminder that none of us are morning people.

book reviews

Moving right along! I feel like I'm making real progress toward shrinking the stack this year.

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. Otherwise known as a tempest in a teapot. Such a dated novel - all this dramatic tension, all sorts of shadowy things suggested but never fully explained ... all leading to really just nothing. Way too overblown in tone, completely underwhelming in plot and denouement.

Hugh Pentecost, Murder in High Places. Back to the international terrorism plots, and filled with further cantankerous commentary on modern life. I appreciate that Pentecost is willing to have his narrator look like a shallow cad on occasion, and I liked the departure from established routine ... but I am very tired of having Chambrun's poor secretary have to be tied up and in peril all the time.

Jim Kjelgaard, Stormy. A nice little book about a dog and a boy (well, late teens, I would say). A little more filled with commentary than his usual, and more details on the arts of hunting and fishing, but still a good tale with a lot of action and a pair of heroes to root for.

Hugh Pentecost, Murder Goes Round and Round. Weird but interesting plot to this one, lots of action. Again with the kidnapping, though, which I grant makes a nice change of pace from all the times the poor narrator has gotten stuck escorting a killer through the hotel, waiting for someone to save him, but it does bug me that Chambrun and his secretary continue to prove in each book that they have an intimate relationship, but by the next book that's all just speculation again.

sweetness overdone

Yesterday, I spent half an hour walking the aisles of Walmart doing some shopping. In the cart with me, the 3-year-old, who barely paused to take a breath in the running monologue she carried on. And I mean it - every second we were in the store, her voice was going, going, going ...

As we were rolling through the parking lot, I leaned over the cart to kiss her, out of sheer desperation to try and get her to stop talking. Afterward, she beamed at me, and said, "Oh, Mommy, that makes my heart feel good!"

My first reaction? To wonder where she gets this kind of saccharine manipulation. I'm certainly not someone who gets her way by deploying cuteness and over-sugared wiles. (Well, baked goods, I grant you ... ) Is this something little girls learn from TV and society, or is it hard-wired in certain personalities, that sweetness and light get you farther?

My second reaction was to imagine either of her brothers having the same reaction to being kissed (in public, no less!) - and I realized that if they ever did, I would melt into a puddle of goo right there in the parking lot, and immediately do their bidding. Interesting double standard, no? But as I pointed out to the kindergartener yesterday, if you expect something all the time, once it happens it has ceased to be special. Veronica's overuse of otherwise delightful comments such as "Oh, Mommy, you're so beautiful" has robbed them of the meaning they would have if they came from the other two, who aren't given to constant bombardments of extravagant compliments.

(And before you call me on it, yes, in 10 years when she can't stand me and the insults fly in the same frequency, I will be missing this stage!)

book reviews

And we're back! Normal school routine back today, went well, everyone happy but tired. :)

Hugh Pentecost, With Intent to Kill. This one had a decent, if convoluted, plot and didn't deal with international terrorism, which was a relief. It was more basic human desires twisted, which I think makes for a more interesting story. I do find in his later books that I get annoyed by the 1980s conversational habit of all the characters referring to one another as "luv". Additionally, I think in the later books that the author's age begins to show - he's too quick to dismiss people in their 20s as "the younger generation", too dismissive of new music, and too obsessed with the new morality, always needing to explain why it's ok that his narrator sleeps around. The narrator himself is only supposed to be in his early 40s by this point, and with a job as public relations director of a major hotel would not be able to afford that level of ageism. Still, they remain interesting reads. It's just that I think they're better when you're not reading one on top of the other.

Peter Lovesey, The Reaper. Very weird little book. Agatha Christie meets Charles Addams weird. It's a British mystery, but one where you know the identity of the killer from the 10th page ... and in which the killer is the protagonist. It's very bucolic in nature (hence the Christie), but the overarching premise - that you're to root for this pleasant clergyman despite his misdeeds - strikes an odd tone. I enjoyed reading it, but don't think I'd want to read it again.

Jennifer Rabin, Spell Bound. This is the 5th book in the cheesy 1980s "Swept Away" series of teen romance novels. They're tremendously dated, the characters are so cool and completely individual as to be unbelievable ... and I enjoy them for their history-based plots, their cool characters, and the sense of nostalgia that I get to dip into with them.

Time Life, Confederate Ordeal: The Southern Home Front. I've had this whole series of Time Life books on the Civil War since I was 11 or 12, probably, but I've never read most of them, so I'm slowly working my way through the series. I admit that this one was a bit of a disappointment - I expected more about the people of the South and less about the politicians. There was a decent overview of the reasons why people kept going despite the hardships, and a lot of discussion on the economics of the situation, but it was lacking in personal detail. I suppose that's to be expected, given the scope of the topic ... but the other books have been better.

the final countdown

Here we are, heading to blast-off! Three more days till second grade, four more till kindergarten. We celebrated the day today by going to Chuck E.'s, where the prizes get more and more chintzy every time we go. On the bright side, I got my all-time high score in skee ball - 290,000! I was on today, man.

Now we're having a quiet afternoon at home, with possibly some swimming later if the clouds hold off. Tomorrow, playdate (one that's more for Mommy than for kids, however, so I'm feeling a bit guilty about that), and hopefully Canobie Lake on Weds.

Then the fun really starts!

book reviews

Ian Rankin, Black and White. I first heard of Rankin, and his detective, John Rebus, when I saw the BBC version starring John Hannah. The show was interesting, so I picked up a Rankin book next time I saw one. On the opening page, Rankin quoted James Ellroy, so I figured we were in like Flynn. But as I got into the book, I found it overall disappointing. It wasn't a waste of time to read - the dialogue was witty, the glimpses of Scottish life interesting - but it just didn't grab me. Let's face it - alcoholic detectives living on the very edge of respectability are a penny a pound. At the end of the day, Rankin's wasn't much different from the next guy. At least, not enough so to make me curious about what happens next. I believe this will be the end of my literary relationship with DI Rebus.

C.R. Athearn, Boston in Seven Days. This was a Christmas gift from my brother-in-law, and I thought it was an interesting idea - reading what's essentially a guidebook from 1920s Boston. It's an account of a man guiding a young couple through town, a different part of the Boston area each day for a week. Unfortunately, it didn't really live up to my hopes. A bit too wordy, a bit too preachy, too much exposition and not enough description. The end chapter was on Plymouth, and I found it so short and meatless I was bitterly disappointed. A nice idea, but not so exciting in the follow-through.

Sy Montgomery, The Good, Good Pig. This tale of life raising a pig from runthood to his eventualy death at age 14 was reasonably interesting. (It was a book club selection, one of the more enjoyable ones.) The narration was a bit all over the place - stories stuck in randomly here and there, characters introduced and written out in a matter of pages without any sense of how they continued to fit into the life of the pig and his owners, lots of jumping around in time with supporting characters while attempting to give a fairly linear account of the pig's life. A good tightening could have done wonders. In the long run, an enjoyable book, but not really a keeper.

Charles B. Haydon (Stephen W. Sears, ed.), For Country, Cause & Leader. Now, I've read a fair number of Civil War journals. But this one, for breadth and depth, thoughtfulness and narrative, is head and shoulders over all of them. (Including Robert Hale Strong's A Yankee Private's Civil War, the book that really launched my interest in the era.) Haydon was a thoughtful and articulate young man who had put his entire heart and soul into the cause of soldiering on until the war was over. His descriptions of camp life, discussions of the lower echelon of rank's view of the big picture, view of the machinations involved in what to do with various regiments and their officers, and commentary on other soldiers' actions was some of the most interesting Civil War-related reading I've ever done. Which is saying something. Definitely a keeper, and I suspect one I'll be referring back to over and over.

the youngest person in the room

That's generally me, in case you're wondering. Or, at the very least, the youngest adult in the room. Now, I'm usually okay with this, but last night at book group was a very unusual experience.

You see, my book group is largely made up of women who have been attending for 20 years or more. There are two other women who have kids the ages of my kids, but they're both 10 years older than I am. As far as the rest of the women go - most of them have kids who are about my age. Last night, neither of the two 'younger' women (still a decade older than I am) appeared, so it was me and all the older ladies. Mostly retired. So the conversation largely revolved around golf, and grandpets. Yes, I said grandpets. These women were discussing their children's dogs and cats with the enthusiasm you'd expect them to be using regarding children. Frankly, I don't talk about my kids this way, for fear of being boring.

Mostly, I was seized with a longing to have a dog. But I also couldn't help being amused by the vast difference in life location between me and the rest of the women in the room, and wondering what they were like when they were my age. Well, and enjoying the view of where I'm going. It looks like a fun place!

solitude on the prairie

I just finished rereading By the Shores of Silver Lake, the fifth book in the Little House series. I haven't read this one in years; growing up, it was my least favorite of the series, and my copy of it from my original set (given to me for Christmas when I was less than a year old) was lost when I left it behind in a previous move. So I think the last time I could have read the book was when I was 19 or 20. Obviously, a few things have changed since then! Enough so that in rereading the book last week I found it surprisingly powerful in a number of ways.

For one thing, this is the book where Laura transitions from child to woman. She rebels against it - the book is filled with references to her desire to be running free on the prairies like a little girl again - but with her older sister having gone blind, Laura has been promoted to the oldest helper in the family. Nothing to be done about that. (Interestingly, especially given my thoughts and discussions on childhood from yesterday, in BtSoSL Laura is 13, and beginning to be considered the third adult of the family.) Laura's responsible for her blind sister, for helping around the house, watching out for the younger children, assisting her father, taking care of the cow ... the list goes on and on.

I've been giving a lot of thought to her portrayal of her sisters in recent years. Grace, obviously, is too young during the series to be much a part of Laura's life, and indeed, Laura seems the least involved with her youngest sister of the whole family. Carrie becomes a more pivotal figure later, as she grows older and into Laura's sphere, but is largely portrayed as delicate, over-sensitive, and too easily frightened, especially as compared with Laura, who is bigger in age and bone structure and strength, and who covers her fears. Mary has a similar one-note treatment - bossy and over-perfect before she goes blind, sweet and good and nicely perfect afterward.

And the parents' attitudes toward the sisters are very different as well. Pa gives Laura all these pet names - flutterbudget, half-pint - but nowhere in the series does he refer to any of the other girls by a pet name. His relationship with Laura seems closer and more companionable than his relationship with any of his other daughters. They're portrayed as being very similar spirits, but it begs the question how much of that is Laura's view of the past and how much of it was actual? Given her position as oldest helper, her general lack of interest in the more gentle womanly indoor tasks, her physical strength, and her love of freedom and the outdoors, I can easily believe that she was his designated helper, and a certain level of closeness would have come with that. But I wonder what his relationships with the other sisters were like.

In contrast, Ma seems to view Laura as a bewildering challenge. In comparison with the other three girls, all portrayed as being very amenable to ladylike interests and tasks, Laura refers to herself as a 'hoyden', and the underlying thread in her dealings with her mother is that the two women never quite understand each other. They grow to appreciate one another as Laura grows older, but the essential difference between them never seems to diminish. In BtSoSL, Ma is very much the catalyst for a lot of Laura's feelings of repression and longing to be free, as it's Ma's gentle but firm hand that keeps trying to force her into the "ladylike" box into which she just doesn't fit.

The other thing that struck me while reading BtSoSL was the description of their winter on the prairie in the surveyors' house, much of which they spent entirely alone. Firstly, again in conjunction with some of the parenting discussions I was involved in this week, I was struck by how few people these days would trust themselves so far from any kind of human contact. No doctors, no hospitals, you name it. Not another soul within 40 miles - which in those days was a more than significant distance. But also, I was intoxicated by the thought of the quiet and the solitude. I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't actually be happy all alone with no one to talk to for a whole winter, but the idea of being all alone in all that space for even a few minutes sounds breathtaking.

Laura's books are run through with the thread of her longing to keep moving. I sympathize with that desire. My biggest struggle with my (very good) life as I get older is the dichotomy that I want badly for my children to grow up involved in a community, to have that support behind them and the comfort of the familiar ... but I also don't want to give up the intoxicating speculation of what life might be like beyond the next hill. And I know the second has given way to the first, much as I try to pretend the possibilities lie out there. So I respond strongly to Laura and Pa's joy in packing up the wagon and being on the move again. And I appreciate that I can go with them in my imagination while staying put in real life.