in spring ...

Truthfully, my fancy has been mostly turning to thoughts of outdoor projects ... and many of them are prosaic and not fanciful at all.

With the approach of spring, I get to start dreading the periodic fights with the lawnmower - do I spray the cut grass all over the lawn, then go back and pick it up once it's dried, thereby adding an entire second time that I have to get child coverage so I can get on the lawnmower? Or do I cut and collect at once, causing extended time and irritation as I have to dig the cut grass out of the collecting arm over and over again? Neither is a particularly attractive option.

Then there's the brush - down the driveway and along the roadfront of the easement, there's tons of scrubby tree-like stuff that just looks messy and doesn't need to be there. A lot of it needs to be clipped out and removed. Plus, there are tons of branches from the ice storm strewn around the property that need to be collected and ... well, done something with.

But then there's the planting - herbs and flowers in the front, raised beds (which need to be built) and vegetables near the barn.

It sounds, on the one hand, fun and rewarding, and on the other, like another tiresome chore that I have to make time for.

Suddenly, the lack of really nice weather seems less annoying and more like an excellent excuse to procrastinate...

rainy Sunday

With company gone and me largely recovered from the sleep upset caused by a very early airport run, today looks like a good day to get things done ...

Except that it's rainy outside and at 11:00 three of us are still in our pajamas. It feels much more like a lounge around snuggling, reading, playing games, watching TV/movies day than an efficiently get things done day.

But of course the to-do list is long and filled with things I'm actually getting paid to do. Which will win? Good question.

5 reasons I'll be sticking to running on the treadmill

Instead of outdoors, that is.

1. It doesn't feel safe. Unless I found some kind of track, I'm running on the street. The streets in my neighborhood don't have sidewalks, and especially in early spring when there's snow piled up on both sides of the road, it's a narrow road with only enough room for two cars. Other people run/walk, and the walking wouldn't scare me as much, but running with the iPod going loud enough to provide a good running beat makes me nervous.

2. There's no privacy. I just generally don't much like being looked at (one of the many reasons it's good that I got out of acting!), and I particularly don't really want to be seen while running. Does anyone care? No ... but it affects my run anyway to know that people passing me on the street can see me.

3. Numbers. I like to have the distance, calories burned, and time right in front of me. They provide lots of opportunities to set small goals for myself, and enable me to have a good benchmark for my progress.

4. Water. A good run provides a significant portion of my water intake, but I have not figured out how to carry water while running. Put it in the jacket pocket? Then you're unbalanced while running and your jacket is flopping around. Hold on to it? Too distracting, too uncomfortable. Much easier to put it in the handy treadmill cupholder!

5. Practicality. I live in New England, and in the snow belt. December through April there's no good way to run outside, even if I wanted to. And I have children. Even once all of them are in school regularly, in July/August/part of June it's not practical to run outside because there would be no one to watch them. So over half the year, running on the treadmill is the safer thing to do, which means having to get into outdoor running shape all over again every spring and fall. Not worth it!

I'd rather be an indoor runner and then just take nice walks when it's convenient. After all, how much scenery can you really look at when you're jogging past trying to make sure you're not stepping on a stray stick or pile of doggie waste?

book reviews

Laura Ingalls Wilder, West from Home. This is a series of letters written by Laura Ingalls Wilder to her husband when she visited San Francisco in 1915. It's kind of a reread ... although I haven't read it in years. It's a good read, and you could see the beginnings of her writing style.

Joan Overfield, A Christmas Affair. Another reread - and a fun one, too. Good characters, good love story, not too over-cliched in plot.

Anne Perry, Shoulder the Sky. This is the second in Perry's World War I series. I kind of liked it ... but then, I kind of didn't. It was less dense than her Victorian novels, but the same kind of preachiness, the same kind of overarching conspiracy plot (my least favorite kind of plot ever), and a lot less of it. The murder was incidental to the descriptions of battlefields and why they were awful. I really don't feel any great interest in reading the rest of the series.

Monique Raphel High, The Four Winds of Heaven. Another reread - a grand historical epic about a family in revolutionary Russia filled with interesting characters. A little soap opera-y, but aren't they all. One of my favorites.

American Idol - Country night

Yes, I'm sure bloggers across the country have titled their entries today the same way. Call me a conformist.

Overall, I found country night underwhelming. The performances (generally) weren't awful, but I wasn't blown away by them, either.

My favorite performances of the night were Adam Lambert and Kris Allen. Both took good songs, made them unique, sang them well. Also Anoop, who didn't go a unique route, but gave his best performance yet.

I thought Allison, Danny, Megan, Scott, and Matt gave decent, acceptable performances, but none of them wowed me.

My personal bottom three: Lil, whose "Independence Day" was lackluster and did no justice to her voice or the song; Alexis, who I usually love, missed a lot of notes on "Jolene" and was clearly not excited about the song; and Michael, who made a big misstep choosing "Ain't Goin' Down 'til the Sun Comes Up". People keep saying he's this big country guy ... but he's never chosen a song that was anything close to being country. He's a pop ballad singer, and should have chosen a more contemporary crossover hit instead of a more up-tempo strongly country song. But the bottom line here is that his talent level is just not up to where most of his competition is, and he should be going home tonight. But will he?

(Times, again, okay font, but not as good as the usual one.)

a quiet Tuesday morning

Today is one of my favorite kinds of days - the ones where we don't have any plans and don't go anywhere! Veronica's watching Dragon Tales and building forts with dominoes; Charles is playing in his room; I've got two loads of laundry going, finished cleaning out Veronica's room, have had coffee, and have been through all my daily web sites (although I have not yet gotten around to having breakfast).

(Update: Veronica just came in and announced that she is a robot.)

The rest of the day is likely to be more of the same - I'm hoping to burn through my to-do list while keeping my two younger children happy and quiet. It's nice to have this little oasis of quiet in the middle of a busy week!

(Lucida's not a bad font, but I still think I like the usual one better.)

book reviews

Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. I found this book very conflicting. On the one hand, it had a lot of good insight and information into what goes on in the lives of girls in their preteens (despite the title, the premise of the book is that junior high is the real crucible for growing girls), and a lot of good things to say about why brave and spirited girls turn into conformists. On the other hand ... the book was written in 1994, which makes it incredibly dated at this point. And the author's blind insistence that the culture of the '90s was "junk" and to blame for everything made the tone shrill and one-note. (In addition, there's a note of disdain every time a young girl seems to care about her appearance. I mean, I get that there's more than a pretty face ... but it should also be okay to want to look in the mirror and like what you see.) Overall, an interesting read, but not a keeper.

Anne Perry, Traitors Gate. One of her better books. The plot was lively, the characterizations in-depth, and she really seemed to care about and be committed to the book. (Sometimes you can tell when the book just wasn't working for her.) As I've said before, I'm not wild about the political intrigue that keeps creeping in, but for this book it worked.

Louis L'Amour, Callaghen. Not one of his better books! I found the character a little too all-encompassingly wise in all things western, the plot a little too like many of his other books. Not terrible, but not memorable, either.

William Blake, Selected Poetry. Well, I slogged my way through the whole book, and came out the other end with this: Blake was insane. His religious poems are highly complex ... but also highly weird. His shorter poems are not as weird, but not all that memorable. Altogether, not going to be a keeper.

American Idol, Top 13

No, I'm not going to do a performance-by-performance recap. I wasn't wild about the theme (other than "Thriller", I'm not sure how much I really like Michael Jackson's music) and thought the performances ranged from not very good to pretty good - no one was good or bad enough to justify being called out too seriously.

However, that said, for the first round? The fact that nobody out-and-out blew? Pretty amazing. At this point, I can narrow most of the contestants down into three categories:

People I look forward to seeing/hearing next week: Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta, Alexis Grace, Anoop Desai. (Hm. Had no idea I had such an "A" theme.)
People who I'm sure will be fine but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there: Danny Gokey, Lil Rounds, Kris Allen.
People I find boring and would rather not listen to: Michael Sarver, Megan Corkrey, Matt Giraud, Scott Whats-His-Name. (Almost an "M" theme.)

It'll be interesting to see how that changes as the time goes on. I found both Jasmine and Jorge (a "J" theme this time) marginally more interesting than anyone in my bottom category, but not interesting enough to miss them too much next week.

I've bet on Adam Lambert to win it all ... but I think a lot will depend on the shrewdness of his song choices. I think whether he finishes in the top 2 or not will largely be based on his own decisions - he absolutely can pull off a vote-worthy performance every week, but the question is whether he's willing to pander to the tastes of the voters. My second choice would be Allison, but while she has the voice, she doesn't have the maturity, and I can easily see her making a fatal song choice and going out in the middle of the pack, boring the audience with performances too similar too each other, or simply just burning out.

I have very little opinion about the Judges' Save. It would have been good for Tamyra, but she went out in the Top 4, so wouldn't have qualified anyway. Daughtry's doing just fine despite the boot. Jennifer Hudson - well, contrary to popular opinion, I thought she deserved to go.

At any rate, I thought the Top 13 effort was one of the better openers in the show's history, I look foward to future weeks, and I AM SO GLAD they didn't put Tatiana through.

saying thank you

Yesterday, my son Charles did something my children almost never do - he came downstairs to the basement while I was folding laundry to ask if he could open the box of animal crackers. Usually, they stand somewhere upstairs calling my name and asking questions that I can't here while I'm downstairs shouting out my location and telling them to wait until I come back up. I was very pleased with the little guy, and I said so - I looked him in the eye and thanked him for coming down and asking so nicely.

His face lit up the room. He was so proud of himself, and so thrilled that I was proud of him, too.

It's a good reminder that something simple like apologizing when you've been in the wrong, or thanking them for something they've done unexpectedly right (especially if they don't even know they've done something remarkable) can make their day, which turns right around and makes yours.

The Amazing Race

We're now several episodes into The Amazing Race, season whichever-this-is. So far, I'm finding it a highly enjoyable season. The challenges have been truly challenging, and it's been a decent balance of things that require physical strength and things that require awareness of detail and mental quickness.

The teams are all generally interesting and there are no clear "villains" and no seriously annoying teams. (Steve and Linda, the couple from Virginia who were eliminated in the second episode, would certainly have been annoying if they had made it much farther, but were fine as long as they were there.) To my surprise, what's made it a particularly enjoyable season so far is that there are no teams I actually like. All of them fall into the middling category - fine to watch, but I wouldn't care if they were eliminated. Even the team I picked to win out of the starting gate (the stuntmen) won't make me too sad when their elimination time comes, because they've proved to be basically incompetent. Which makes it much more fun - there's no nail-biting, no feeling nervous because the particular favorite might be "Philiminated" and then what would be the reason to watch, no disgruntlement when the "bad guys" do well in a leg. I can watch with enjoyment unmitigated by stress.

I'm afraid I won't be able to say the same about American Idol after tonight's Top 13 round ... but that's another post for another day.

5 things that make me happy today

Mondays always seem like a good time for this. Especially this Monday, which follows a lovely warm (snow-melting) weekend with a heavy, wet snowstorm.

1. The trees are alive! Our little fruit trees that we planted last spring all have teensy tiny little buds on them. Yay!

2. Books, books, books, books, books. Reading them, sorting them, organizing them, unpacking them - they're endless fun.

3. General Foods International Coffee. Yeah, yeah, it's all '80s, but it's darn good, too! I start every day off with a cup. Cafe Francaise is my favorite, although this morning's was Dark Mayan Chocolate.

4. Facebook. Especially given that I'm now off BabyCenter, whose bulletin boards provided me with entertainment for 8 years, Facebook not only allows me to keep up with people, it gives me bonus entertainment all day long.

5. World of Warcraft. 'Nuff said!

computer habits

Before the refurbishment of my office, I kept my computer and all my papers on the corner of the kitchen table. This was convenient for me - I could keep an eye on the kids or watch TV while I worked. But it also meant that one place at the table was always taken up, and it was way too easy to sit down at the computer anytime something pressing wasn't calling (or, any time I didn't feel energetic enough to accomplish something more pressing). Meanwhile, my lovely desk sat under piles and piles of papers, and I couldn't use it if I wanted to.

Now that my office has been finished, I've committed to keeping the computer on it, and have kept at it for what, now, 2-3 weeks? My desk stays cleaner, the table stays cleaner without the accumulation of all the stuff I need to keep track of, I spend less time at the computer and the time I do spend is far more useful, and when I'm not in my office, I'm reading more and spending more quality time with the kids.

It's been a very good change.

(Not sure I'm wild about the Courier font, either.)

book reviews

Always a happy day. :)

Anne Perry, The Hyde Park Headsman. Sllooowwww starter. Took me forever to get into it. And I'm finding Perry's writing is so dense and stylized that even though I enjoy the books, they tend to bog me down reading them so close together.

Elizabeth D. Leonard, All the Daring of the Soldier. Initially, my reaction to this book was that it read strongly like someone's thesis expanded. I think that's still a strong possibility, but having looked at the publication date (1999), I think it's equally possible that the scholarship is just dated. Study of women's roles in the Civil War has expanded so much in the last 10 years that what would have been a good basic overview in 1999 is too simplistic in 2009. I didn't think it added anything to the books I already have on the topic.

Charles Bracelen Flood, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War. Masterful. (What seemed to me to be) an entirely fresh look at these two men and the impact that their mutual trust in and support of each other had on both their personal lives and on the fate of our country. Their personalities emerged strongly from the pages, the writing was passionate and eminently readable, and the closing chapter one of the most lyrically moving it has ever been my privilege to read.

Jane Finnis, A Bitter Chill. A nice sophomore effort. I didn't love it as much as I did Get Out or Die, but I think that has a lot to do with already knowing the characters - their solidity and vibrance were no longer a delightful surprise. I did like that this one had a more solid and complex plot, and that the sister got to do more than just hang out at the inn waiting for the heroine to come back from her many adventures. I did not enjoy the trite "lovers misunderstanding" plotline, but I'll give her a break ... maybe it wouldn't have been so obvious in 91 A.D., when presumably it wasn't already a cliche. Definitely looking forward to the next one.

Farmer Boy

Last night, I finished reading Farmer Boy to my boys. A while back, I decided that I didn't have enough opportunities to share my cool books with them, and started making nightly reading part of our bedtime routine. We do five pages of a book I choose, and five pages of a book they choose. (Theirs tend to be shorter, and they take turns making the selection.)

I chose Farmer Boy for a few reasons. One, because it was handy and unpacked at a time when 99% of my books were still lost in boxes. Two, because it's one of the Little House books that I adore, and obviously the most boy-centric of them. Three, because Almanzo Wilder's home is a living history site now, and I intend to take the crew of them to see it.

Surprisingly, they really enjoyed it. (Greyson more so than Charles.) They'd ask questions, stop what they were doing (they often play while I read) to come over and listen more closely, and would remember what we'd read when similar themes came up in our daily lives. Our next selection is Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which we're all quite excited about, especially since the movie found a new backer and is back on the schedule!

As a final note on Farmer Boy: It's one of a set that I was given for Christmas when I was 10 months old. I still have all but two (tragically left behind for safe-keeping and lost in a move), all still in readable condition. Granted, Farmer Boy has long ago lost its cover and title page, but given that the book is 33 years old now, and has been read probably twice a year since I learned to read (at a conservative estimate), I think it's holding up well.

(As an additional note, I think the Arial font is a failed experiment.)

nursing

It has been one of the great surprises and sources of shame of my married and parenting life to have to admit that I am not good with sickness. My response to a sick child or husband is generally to send them to bed and hope they sleep until they feel better. I'm not good at figuring out which medicine to give when or in what dose, and I generally give the sick person more credit for being able to take care of him- or herself than is warranted by the age and illness! I do all right (with the kids) with the level of illness that requires lying on the couch and watching TV all day, and I'm reasonably good with injuries. But a ministering angel? Is not me. All of which makes it fortunate that my kids don't get sick that often!

commentary

First, my own commentary on the end of February 2009 - I don't like the stomach flu and I'm tired of the snow.

That said, on to the topic at hand. I've become a big fan of DVD commentaries. I mean, I've always liked them, but I always looked for the ones with the cool actors and skipped the ones by the directors, etc. (Even though the actors tend to be nervous and uncomfortable and spend more time watching than they do talking.) One day on a whim I clicked the commentary for a Sex and the City episode by creator Michael Patrick King, and now I'm completely addicted! It's so fascinating to hear the thought process behind every little detail, to listen to what went on behind the scenes that actually created the scene, to hear in his voice and stories the incredible commitment that he and his stars had to making excellence in the form of this TV series. It makes you want to watch more intelligently. It reminds you that TV, done well, can also be an art form. It inspires you to want to put all your heart and mind into an art form as well.

From now on, I'll be seeking out the director/producer/writer commentaries on my favorite DVDs, listening for their thoughts on the creation process. I'm sure they'll be fascinating!