5 things that annoy me today

Minor annoyances are piling up today and must be shared.

1. Stores that call you! I just got an automated phone call from Payless Shoe Source. Really? Give me a break, people. And don't get me started on the 30 seconds of silence that ensued before the automation kicked in. Also, I don't usually give my phone number, so they either caught me on a distracted day or shouldn't have it at all.

2. Apparently I used a four-letter word. Blogger has locked my kids' pictures blog as potential spam. And why? Well, they haven't shared the reason, but I suspect it's my use of the word "f - o - x - y" as in ---- Loxy. From Chicken Little. Now my kid can't even tell an old fable without being spam.

3. Television news and their logos. Most appallingly during 9/11 and onward since then, I abhor the idea that someone is employed by TV news stations to create logos and choose fonts for stories of human tragedy. Can't we just have the news reported to us in a sensitive and straightforward manner? Does it really have to have a catchphrase and a logo? This practice cheapens us all.

4. Inconsistent copyeditors. I just had to send an author two pages worth of extra queries because he left the publisher information off all his citations (why, I can't imagine), and the copyeditor only queried it twice. Grr.

5. Bianca. She's one of the two stars of "Cyberchase for Real", the little post-show show after Charles's obsession, Cyberchase. She's whiny; self-centered; oblivious; mean to her friends ... and yet we're supposed to like her because she "learns her lesson" at the end of each clip. Until the next one. It's very poor characterization.

book reviews

Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses. This was a book group selection, and lived up to my expectations for modern fiction. While the writing itself was good - powerful details, introspectively and movingly written - the plotting was ridiculous. The jump cuts from one scene in time to another, the carrot dangling before your nose of all the secrets yet to be revealed (secrets which were, in fact, not revealed at all - there was no payoff at the end, no destination reached, despite all the hints laid out in the book), the complete lack of any clarity involving the different time frames ... it was a mess. When did it become so wrong just to write a story?

Dashiell Hammett, The Continental Op. This was a reread, a collection of short San Francisco noir stories. Quite entertaining. Hammett does a good job of creating, in his nameless detective, a character that is solid but not actually there - who he is has some importance, but much less than what he does. You get a sense of him without actually knowing who he is at all. And the stories, of course, are detailed, complex, and interesting without being repetitive.

Hammett, The Big Knockover. More of Hammett's short stories, with a detailed and emotional introduction by Lillian Hellman that is well worth reading. Some of the stories are better than others (notably the semi-autobiographical "Tulip" was quite dull). All in all, a solid and enjoyable book.

Isaac Asimov, Return of the Black Widowers. This is the last Black Widowers book, filled with selected stories from the first books, some unpublished stories, and various tributes to Asimov. The unpublished stories were universally disappointing, sadly, but the book is worth owning, and reading, for Harlan Ellison's moving and heartfelt introduction.

old things

Apologies for the silence! School vacation week and all ... normal routine out the window.

I was sitting at my desk a moment ago, moved the paper on which I had been writing my to-do list for tomorrow (a week with no to-do list - undreamed-of luxury!), and saw the marks of my writing in the desk. Most people would gasp in dismay. I was pretty pleased with it, and spent another couple of minutes looking over my desk at all the other marks.

I love my desk. We bought it at an antique store in New Hampshire the first summer we lived in New England. It's just a big wooden slab sitting on top of a trestle base, and has always looked like it was well-used. Over the past decade, many more marks have been etched into its surface, and it looks like an old piece of furniture. But it's useful, beautiful, big enough for all my stuff, and since it is a well-used old piece of furniture, I'm very happy to have it look that way. I've never understood this desire to "antique" new furniture, and "refurbish" old furniture. I want my new things to look new, while gradually adding the scratches and other bits of character that make them loved pieces of the household landscape, and my old things to look old - they've earned it.

Some day, someone's going to get my desk and start looking at the white marks in the wood that spell out part of today's to-do list, and wonder what the heck I was thinking. Hopefully, if they decide to refinish it and eradicate the marks of my presence, I won't be around to know about it.

vacation week

So far, school vacation week has gone pretty well. There was fun with Daddy all weekend, lots of playing outside and in. There was an extra day with Daddy when he was home for Patriots Day. There was playtime at a cool playground, where we met the friends we planned to meet and some we hadn't expected to see. Bonus! There was a long playdate with good friends on a rainy day yesterday. Today there's been morning playtime while Mommy tried to work and catch up on laundry; special trip for ice cream at lunch; now playtime in the rain while apple pie bakes. Tomorrow and Friday both bring playdates with more friends. Who needs big plans and long trips when you have friends and fun so easily? I'm kind of sad that school is starting again so soon!

taking the "push" where you find it

I've had a couple of wake-up moments strike me in the last few days, both of which, if applied properly, should be good "pushes" toward greater achievements.

Firstly, the humiliation. I took a prescription to a new pharmacy where they had to input my information for a new account. The pharmacist proceeded to ask me if I am male or female. Now, granted: the name is gender nonspecific; as were my clothes, from the red fleece jacket to the somewhat beat-up blue and grey tennis shoes. One could even argue that the accompanying three-year-old wasn't enough determinant, that maybe in these days of transgenderdom they have to ask, etc. The fact remains that if it isn't obvious and the ambiguity is not intentional ... well, things have to be improved. (No, I didn't leave in tears. I took it in stride and was even somewhat amused. However, I do feel that if I allow the memory to fester a bit it's more likely to be motivational!)

Secondly, the pop culture. Yes, I did it - I set up a Twitter account and am now following various people who are mostly interesting. (Frankly, I kind of wish I had waited a few days, as I'm not really finding the Kutcher/CNN race that interesting. But then again, usually I'm not part of these pop-culture events, and I am part of this one, so I suppose that's something.) At any rate, as I sit here watching the chats of people who are busily going about their lives and careers, it occurs to me that my own chats probably aren't that interesting. Not because I'm not a celebrity, but because I'm not doing that much. Sure, I have kids, and they have activities ... but there's an equilibrium there between actually doing something interesting by accompanying your children to things and just being the means by which the children do something interesting. As they get older, my reporting on their achievements as my own achievements by proxy will lose its validity and simply become lame. If I'm going to Tweet, I might as well be doing something Tweet-worthy.

So - diet/exercise, writing. Both must be done so I can a) be recognized as the proper gender, and b) hold my own - in my own mind - amongst people who have things to say.

cleanliness!

Right now, I sit here typing away while my children are being cleansed. And no, there's no auxiliary parent helping them. One young lady is splashing away in the bath ... and a young man is busily experimenting with all my soaps in the shower, while the second one waits for his turn!

Yes, my sons have learned to shower and clean themselves! It's a banner day for me - so much nicer than the screaming match that usually results when I try to get Veronica to actually bathe in her bath. They do their own soaping, rinsing, and drying!

(Also, I kind of like how excited Greyson was when I told him I'd take him shopping for his own special soaps. Nice to be able to share that kind of shopping experience with one of my boys!)

5 things that make me happy today

I'm generally feeling like I'm not accomplishing a lot and not living up to my own expectations (which wouldn't actually be such a bad thing - the feeling, that is - if I could use it to spur myself forward ...), so it's time for a little affirmation ...

1. books! I just opened a box full of paperbacks that haven't seen the light of day in a year and a half ... L.M. Montgomery, Douglas Adams ... and kids' books in the bottom! Woohoo!

2. sunny, decently temperatured weather. It's not warm enough to go jacketless yet, but at least you can go outside, have some sun shine on your face, and think about planting things next month.

3. good boys. My sons are pretty enjoyable - funny, interesting, occasionally helpful, and snuggly. I think I'll keep 'em!

4. North and South. I've been watching my new DVDs and am wallowing in nostalgia. Such fun!

5. the return of my better half. It's been nice having sole ownership of the post-bedtime TV (see #4), but it's also nice to have two parents in the house and someone to talk to who doesn't cry and whine on a regular basis.

book reviews

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden. What a lovely book! So much more complex than A Little Princess, the two (three, if you want to count Archibald Craven) main characters go through a tremendous, but believable, character arc. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that toward the end, Mary disappears a little as the focus narrows to Colin, but you could argue that the direction of her growth has already been well established by that point.

Ethan S. Rafuse, McClellan's War. Interesting book. Like many Civil War buffs, I know about McClellan's "slows" and have never been a big fan, so it was nice to see what happened from his perspective. But scholarship on McClellan seems to be either anti or pro, and I'd have liked a little more balance. In the end, I think this one is not a keeper - I'm just not interested enough in the topic, and didn't find the writing compelling enough to overcome that.

(I must just break in here to add that Blogger has just made me very happy. I tripped on the cord, knocked the computer off the desk, fortunately was able to reboot with no trouble, and here's my half-finished post waiting for me. Not that rewriting two paragraphs would have been a huge deal ... but it is nice not to have to!)

David Detzer, Dissonance. You know, I liked this book. It's an in-depth study of the days between the firing on Fort Sumter and the battle of Bull Run, which is a narrow but interesting and fairly unstudied (in my experience) topic. And the writing was good. So what's the problem, you ask? Errors. Glaring factual errors. From the chronic misspelling of the last name of a relatively sizeable military figure to the major error of confusing Richard Henry Lee with "Light Horse" Harry Lee, they jump out and make you wonder ... how many errors are there that aren't so obvious? Can you really trust this author, if these basic bits of fact-checking - which ought to be obvious to a scholar, if they're obvious to an amateur - were missed? I think that makes it not a keeper.

Barry Strauss, The Trojan War. This one, on the other hand, IS a keeper. It's a study of the Trojan war based on what current archaeology and historiography can decipher, cross-matched with Homer's version. The story is written compellingly, the history and speculation are mixed in seamlessly. The author is honest about what is known versus what is believed and clear about where he falls on the belief spectrum. Altogether, a very good book.

It is time to stop being a schlub.

(What is a schlub, you may ask? Well, what does it sound like? That's pretty much it.)

And that's my message today. It is time to stop being a schlub. Time to stop:

- setting goals that I don't keep.
- letting my self-image remain nonexistent (really, I don't actually have an image of myself as a
physical presence).
- allowing myself to talk me out of (or into) things that I should (or shouldn't) be doing.


Basically, it's time to stop being a lazy, self-indulgent schlub with no willpower.

That's all!

me, myself, and I

It's true - flaws and all, I am my own favorite person. There's nobody in the world I'd rather spend time with than me. I'm the only person who gets all my jokes, has read all the same books and watched the same movies, knows all the same people. Spending time alone with myself is like sinking into the blankets at the end of the day - that same restful and warm feeling.

Does that sound egotistical? It shouldn't. After all, since I have to spend every minute of every day with myself, I might as well relish it. Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone felt that way?

Friday afternoon

So here we are, late on a rainy Friday afternoon. It's been grey and gloomy and somewhat chilly all day, leaving us all a little sleepy.

Right now, one little girl is cooing and singing to her magnetic princess paper doll in the living room, and two little boys are upstairs "cleaning their room" ... which is code for having some kind of massive battle with all their action figures. The cleaning part will come in a frenzied rush when I tell them their father is on his way home. (While I wish they would take the cleaning more seriously, I have to be honest and say I don't mind having them spend a couple of hours upstairs playing ... much more quiet for me!)

I've been doing a little work, doing a little cleaning, and am now going to find a comfy corner of the couch with a cup of coffee and my book for a few minutes before starting the dinner that is thawing in the sink.

Ahhh, Fridays ...

(Trebuchet may be my favorite font so far.)

rainy days ...

I was reflecting on Monday - a grey and rainy day - that weather like that is just the kind that makes you want to get in the car and drive and drive and ... The rain beating on the roof and the windshield wipers swishing back and forth underscore the music on the radio. It's cold outside, but the car heater makes it nice and warm, and everything outside looks freshly washed.

Some one of these rainy days, I'm going to take a drive somewhere/nowhere/anywhere.

book reviews

Jane Austen, "Catharine" and "The Watsons". Both of these are partially completed manuscripts, and you can really tell. You can see the direction each is likely to go in - they're very Austen-esque - but they're rough. Still, they're in my "Complete Novels" edition and as such, worth the reread.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess. Definitely not up to Secret Garden standards, but those are high standards. I enjoyed this more this time than I did last time I read it ... but I do kind of find Sara Crewe a little unbelievable, and even more, a little unlikeable. Which is odd, given that Mary Lennox is MUCH more unlikeable as written, and yet I like her a lot better. ... Then again, Mary has a character arc, and Sara remains much the same from first to last, despite all the things that happen to her. So maybe that's the real problem. Still, it's an entertaining read.

Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. This was a book group pick, and as usual, I found it fine to read but was not wowed. The attempt to make the characters' intentions and accountability ambiguous really just ended in making both the characters not fully fleshed out and kind of unattractive. The plot was solid and readable, but the characters killed the book for me.